


north star navigation

by mockturtletale



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Aftercare, Biting, Canon Compliant, Comeplay, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Everyone Loves Kim Taehyung | V, Exhibitionism, First Time, Hyung Kink, Kim Taehyung | V / Everyone - Freeform, Kim Taehyung | V Bangs BTS, Kim Taehyung | V Is Hot, Kink Negotiation, Light Bondage, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Degradation, Multi, OT7, Overstimulation, POV Multiple, Pining, Rimming, Sex Toys, Spanking, Subspace, Voyeurism, pain play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 158,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23131090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: because that’s the truly infuriating thing about taehyung and what he has become.he’s hot as the surface of the sun itself and he knows it too. he doesn’t try to hide it, doesn’t deny it or get coy about it like jimin does, like most people would.but he doesn’t always seem to realize how it effects the rest of them, doesn’t always look to know that they don’t just fall at his feet because they adore him, but because every single one of them is trying to earn their way into his bed. and also because they adore him.and on the one hand - thank fucking god. thank every possibly deity that could exist, that ever has been or will come to be that taehyung is happy to benefit from it, but doesn’t seem to want to push it, hasn’t thus far been inclined to abuse it. because he’d ruin them. he’d take every single one of them down and they’d thank him for it in turn and then politely ask for more.
Relationships: Everyone/Everyone, Jeon Jungkook/Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Namjoon | RM, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V, Jeon Jungkook/Min Yoongi | Suga, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Kim Namjoon | RM, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Kim Taehyung | V, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Taehyung | V, Kim Namjoon | RM/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Namjoon | RM/Park Jimin, Kim Seokjin | Jin/Kim Taehyung | V, Kim Seokjin | Jin/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Seokjin | Jin/Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung | V/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Taehyung | V/Park Jimin, OT7 - Relationship
Comments: 295
Kudos: 512





	1. introduction - behind the scenes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is not the kinky sexcapade that the tags would suggest!!! those exist in abundance already so this is something else. 
> 
> essentially this is the story of how and why kim taehyung is the catalyst for OT7 bangtan. 
> 
> each chapter is told from a different character's POV (as you'll see from the chapter titles in the drop down menu) and the focus will be on that person's relationship with taehyung to differing extents but also including the backstory and evolution of their feelings for everyone. as the story progresses the ships will rack up too so expect there to be more pairings from different POVs throughout. there are sex scenes in every chapter except chapter 1 but it's by no means PWP, a whole lot leads up to and is generated and explored for their relationships through the enthusiastic (and for sure kinky but always consented and careful) sex they finally get to have with taehyung and one another after literal years of thirsting. 
> 
> chapter 1 is an introduction from namjoon's POV (#leaderthings) and chapter 8 will be an interlude before the final POV chapter (taehyung's: chapter 9) to catch us all back up on where everybody is at with this before we get into the ~big ~finish. also don't be surprised if some codas appear and don't be afraid to ask for those in the comments; because of the POV switch there's things i want to include that i can't readily work into the different narratives here so if there's something you're curious about or would like to see more of, lmk!!! 
> 
> tysm for reading and an especially huge thank you to everyone who has come back over the course of this thing to hang out with me in the comments while they re-read. 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hwifighting) /// [fic twitter](https://twitter.com/mockturtletale)

it’s kind of impossible to track the hotness charts of your friends, namjoon thinks, when you see them pretty much every single day. 

it’s not like someone goes to sleep one night being fairly attractive - like, decently hot - and then rolls out of bed the next morning looking like a brand new person; someone you don’t know how to say ‘no’ to, don’t want to say anything except ‘yes please’ to. 

and without being smug or egotistical about it, they’re across the board pretty hot. it’s their job to be and they have entire teams of people to help them achieve and maintain it, so it’s simply a matter of boredom and instinct to pick up tricks here and there; to learn how to best style your own hair, to sit and watch your makeup being done a few thousand times and figure out by pure happenstance what looks good on you. 

the bigger they get, the better at it they are. and the older they get, the more comfortable with it they become. after years of feeling kinda sexy sometimes they’re probably all in a place where they can acknowledge that they’re pretty hot almost always, now. 

namjoon says ‘probably’ because it’s harder for some, takes a little longer to acknowledge for others, never really lasts all day for any of them. 

except for taehyung. 

he’d been the underdog in this race that none of them are actually trying to win, but only by virtue of not really caring to win. 

when they’d been rookies, taehyung had been too busy having a blast to worry about getting and staying hot. he’d always had the kind of face that make up artists sighed in relief at the sight of and he wore anything they gave him well, looked good in everything, always. he’d never seemed to notice how easy it was for him and he’d certainly never lorded it over the rest of them when they’d had to work hard to achieve the same end result. he’d just been at their shoulder, making them laugh or bounding up with a grin on his face, some kind of mayhem bottled behind his boxy smile and about to be unleashed upon them all. 

namjoon can’t pinpoint when the change happened with any degree of certainty. 

but one day taehyung had been hot and entirely uncaring about it and then they’d blinked and dropped three new albums and promoted eleven new songs and filled out a little more and grown into themselves in ways that could and couldn’t be seen and when the smoke from all of that had cleared, taehyung had been … this. 

he doesn’t bound anywhere anymore. he strides. sometimes, on the really rough days, he slinks. 

he still smiles a lot, joyous and loud about it, but every kind of smile he has now features a display of teeth that’s either too little, too serious, too _knowing_ , or too much entirely - his canines in full view, his confidence undeniable, discomfortingly unavoidable. 

he’s still taehyung. he’s still their friend. nothing about who he is has changed, not really, not anymore than that’s changed for the rest of them too - in good ways, through growth, naturally, with time and experience. 

but now he’s the hottest of them by far. on any given day, at any time, no matter what he is or isn’t wearing, regardless of what he’s saying, entirely besides what he’s doing. 

and a case could be made that he’s always been the hottest one. 

a case could also probably be made that other members are hotter right now, if you really committed to it. 

it’s a subjective thing. it doesn’t follow a strict set of rules. it’s not something that can just be decided arbitrarily and put in place like a psa, like it’s a fact. 

namjoon certainly doesn’t remember being asked to cast his vote on this. 

namjoon has never, to his recollection, declared publicly or otherwise that taehyung was the hottest person he’s ever seen in his life. 

of that, he is certain. 

but then taehyung will walk in. or namjoon will look up from looking at his phone or a book or a run schedule and his gaze will snag on taehyung’s and, well. 

well, then ‘certain’ isn’t the word for it. 

namjoon doesn’t know when it happened, or how, or why. 

but taehyung is the hottest of them all. taehyung is the hottest person on earth. 

and namjoon doesn’t have to wonder if that’s true, because he knows it is. 

namjoon can’t question it at all, because taehyung told him it was so. 

taehyung tells them every single day that it’s true. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

namjoon, hoseok and seokjin are in the kitchen when taehyung walks in. 

they don’t have to leave for an hour so it’s unusual to see him up so early, but he isn’t dressed yet and that both makes sense and makes everything terrible. 

namjoon’s shoulders tense as soon as he hears his footsteps and he feels it when hoseok inhales sharply, sitting next to namjoon and scooting closer like he’s scared. even seokjin, standing at the fridge, freezes for a second like he’s bracing himself. 

taehyung is wearing sleep shorts. silk ones that are white and not exactly not tight. he has a shirt on today, thank god, but it’s just a slip of a thing, material so thin that you can see through it and it’s falling fully off one shoulder so all in all, he really shouldn’t have even bothered. he’s barefoot and his hair is tousled and falling into his eyes and he is - as namjoon may have mentioned - the hottest person on earth. 

it’s like the entire room holds its breath, but taehyung either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, just walks up to the fridge and folds himself along the length of seokjin’s back to reach in over his shoulder and grab a bottle of water. seokjin drops the carton of milk he’d had in his hand and taehyung ‘tsk’s gently and leans down to pick it up, holding on to seokjin’s hip to balance himself. 

namjoon and hoseok collectively breathe a sigh of relief. it’s hard to see a fellow soldier in this war against the onslaught of taehyung’s hotness fall, but throwing themselves to the wolf won’t get anyone anywhere, so it’s better that they stay safely seated where they are, with an entire table between them and the threat. it’s for the greater good. 

but then taehyung comes to sit at the table, slides into a seat facing the two of them and hoseok’s hand reaches for namjoon’s beneath the table and his grip is tight, tight, tight, the danger facing them head on, the threat unavoidable now. 

“morning hyungs,” taehyung says, his voice still so deep with sleep and namjoon grips hoseok’s hand right back. 

“can i have some, please hyung?” taehyung asks namjoon, gesturing at his bowl and namjoon nods before taehyung is even finished speaking. taehyung laughs at him, straight up laughs in his face and namjoon can’t even find it in himself to be upset about it because he can feel how big his eyes have gone, he feels his mouth go dry when taehyung stretches one arm out across the table and pillows his head on it, blinks at namjoon slow and not even overtly flirtatious, just naturally fucking gorgeous and wraps beautiful fingers around namjoon’s wrist, tugs a little until namjoon gets the message. 

so taehyung lies flopped over on the table like some kind of renaissance art come to life, come to torture them all and namjoon spoon feeds him his breakfast. 

after taehyung gets up and meanders off to go get dressed, full and sated and rubbing a hand over his perfect little belly, hoseok just claps namjoon companionably on the shoulder and seokjin sighs as if in relief, as if this could somehow have all gone so much worse, but as is they had a lucky escape. 

and the thing is, he’d be right. because namjoon just completely embarrassed himself, taehyung just made it clear that in case any of them forgot, they exist solely to do his bidding and literally no one in the room could bring themselves to disagree or do anything to suggest otherwise. 

but that’s just an average day for them, now. 

that’s low level normal, now that taehyung knows how hot he is. 

and it really could have been worse. 

it’s pretty regularly much, much worse. 

when namjoon wanders out of the kitchen to grab a quick shower and get ready to leave, he passes by taehyung’s room and jumps a little when the door opens. 

he needn’t have worried though, it’s not taehyung. 

it’s jungkook, stumbling out like he’s running from something, walking unsteadily, unsure, like he has no clue where he is or where he’s going. 

“you good, ‘guk?” namjoon asks and jungkook looks at him like he’s never seen him before, but just for a second, until something clears in his eyes and he shakes his head, nodding. 

“yeah, i’m,” jungkook says, still looking so fucking dazed but namjoon isn’t worried, this isn’t the first time someone has fallen out of taehyung’s room looking like this. it’s not even the first time it’s been jungkook. “i’m. uh. good.” 

“‘kay,” namjoon says, taking jungkook by the shoulders and gently steering him in the direction of his own room, getting him started with a firm little ass pat, “go take a shower, the car will be here in thirty.” 

“yes sir,” jungkook says, and then visibly startles. “uh, hyung. i meant hyung,” he says, frowning and namjoon can only laugh but it’s not unkind. 

“i’ll come knock for you in twenty, yeah?” namjoon says kindly and jungkook nods, starting off toward his room on still unsteady feet. he only has one sock on, but it doesn’t seem like now is the time to point that out. 

namjoon’s morning might have been a little rough, but jungkook is “much, much worse” personified. 

poor kid. 

namjoon is only like eighty six per cent jealous. and he can’t even really tell who of. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

they never sat down as a group and talked about getting apartments. it’s not as if they’re going to move into them for good anytime soon and that’s not because they can’t, but because they simply don’t want to. it works for them, living together and that was true even before they became taehyung’s merry band of consorts. 

someone’s lawyer advised it as a smart investment strategy and that had made sense to the rest of them so they’d started looking into it too. they picked up places they probably won’t live in for a while, might not live in ever actually, one by one as time went on. 

jimin was the last holdout and that wasn’t even really by choice. well, not his choice, at least. 

“oh, you’re looking at places too?” taehyung had asked one day, dropping onto the couch next to jimin and tugging jimin in close until they were pressed together entirely, taehyung’s chin hooked up over jimin’s shoulder and jimin mostly in taehyung’s lap. it wasn’t weird, they were almost always overlapping in some way, in at least several places, but namjoon was increasingly noticing that taehyung was the one that made that happen. he’d just watched him manhandle jimin with absolute ease and jimin hadn’t even looked up from his ipad, just lifted his elbows out of the way so taehyung could wrap his arms around his waist. sometimes, namjoon wondered just what the fuck they looked like to others, to people who didn’t know them. but then taehyung glanced up and winked at namjoon from across the room and namjoon stopped wondering anything. stopped thinking at all. 

“yeah i haven’t picked anything yet, i’m just seeing what’s out there,” jimin had murmured and taehyung hummed, turned his head to let his nose rub up along the line of jimin’s neck. even from eight feet away, namjoon saw jimin’s fingers go white-knuckled around the ipad. 

“but why would you need a place, jimin-ah?” taehyung had asked, his nose still pressed to jimin’s skin and his mouth joining it there, then. 

“um,” jimin had both audibly and visibly gulped, “why uh. why wouldn’t i?” 

it had been kind of fascinating to watch, as much as namjoon commiserated with jimin. it wasn’t like jimin didn’t torture the rest of them with his hotness on occasion, too. but the difference was that jimin did it on purpose. jimin knew when and how to turn it on and off. jimin had weaponized his hotness years ago and they’d all become somewhat immune, sort of, by now. but he was still deadly when he wanted to be, so to see him as the mouse in this cat and mouse game for once was - as namjoon had said - fascinating. 

taehyung had dragged his nose up into the hair at jimin’s temple then, so his mouth was at jimin’s ear. honestly it kind of looked to namjoon like taehyung had paused to tug at jimin’s earlobe with his teeth, but surely not? namjoon was just projecting. he was also straining to hear what taehyung was saying, but he was saying it lowly into jimin’s ear then and namjoon couldn’t have heard even if he was right next to them so he’d settled for watching jimin’s eyes slip shut, sparing a glance for how one of taehyung’s hands had disappeared up under jimin’s shirt, then. 

“ … doesn’t that sound nice, jimin-ah? don’t you wanna live with me instead?” taehyung had said, pulling away and namjoon had only heard it because the whole room had gone completely silent and when he’d looked around, every single one of them had been looking to the couch, all five sets of eyes trained on taehyung wrapped around jimin and jimin having dropped the ipad now, his hands clasped on taehyung’s knees, his head tipped back onto taehyung’s shoulder and his fat bottom lip pulled up between his teeth, probably to muffle the way he was almost panting, by then. 

jimin had nodded, his fingers digging in harder around taehyung’s kneecaps. 

“yeah. yes, please,” he’d said, eyes still closed and his eyebrows dipped together like he was in pain. 

namjoon had shared a brief commiserating look with jungkook, with seokjin too, but it was pretty clear on all their faces that they were all thinking two things, right then. 

number one - how easy would it be to sell an apartment they’d just bought?

and number two - “but what about me, me too, please.” 

and it never got easier, being at taehyung’s mercy, but at least namjoon hadn’t had to go through it alone. 

he took considerable solace in the fact that whenever he was going through it, really felt like he was in over his head with taehyung, there was usually at least two other people in the room who felt the same way. even when namjoon was struggling with it completely alone, he could know that there were five other people in the world who knew exactly what he was going through. 

it didn’t make it any less of a struggle, to live with taehyung and not get to know what it was like to fuck him, but it certainly couldn’t possibly make it any more difficult than it already was. 

namjoon was floundering. 

but he always found his way back to the surface eventually. 

getting to see taehyung in some state of undress was like his own personal version of a defibrillator and thankfully, distressingly, it was one that almost always to hand. 

there was always some brand new problem, some achievement unlocked that namjoon could not have forseen, had not pursued and definitely did not want - taehyung’s hair getting long enough that he wears hairbands now, taehyung coming to the gym with namjoon and jungkook sometimes, taehyung wearing a black tshirt, taehyung standing with his hands in his pockets, taehyung asking if he and namjoon can work on lyrics together in his studio, taehyung stretching his arms up over his head, taehyung having arms, taehyung breathing etc. etc. so on and so forth - but he was never in it alone and that helped. probably. 

if sometimes it meant that namjoon fantasised about taehyung fucking one of their bandmates instead of fucking him, well. that was neither here nor there. 

because no one was getting to fuck taehyung. 

and that? that right there? that’s a problem. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

it was a running joke between taehyung and yoongi, how taehyung would reach for him on stage or in front of the cameras and yoongi would pretend to look at him in disgust, pretend to try and pull away. 

it was hilarious for all of them to watch, because in those kinds of settings yoongi couldn’t try as hard as he usually did to fend off taehyung’s advances. 

yoongi with taehyung was an interesting but senseless mix of kicking him away from him one minute and reaching out to hold his hand the next. 

of all of them, namjoon thinks yoongi probably struggles with taehyung’s newfound acknowledgement of his hotness the most. 

sometimes namjoon will be working with yoongi in his studio, will drag his chair in there for an afternoon so they can just hunker down and get something finished up and out of the way and he’ll have to ask yoongi days in advance, broach the topic with him carefully so yoongi doesn’t just shut him down instinctively. 

but when he’s in there, this very interesting thing happens sometimes. 

people ring the bell on yoongi’s door less often than they do anyone else’s, but more often than you might think. 

jungkook is still the only one with the password, but he rarely uses it so anyone else who wants in has no choice but to ask. 

they ring the bell and wait and sometimes yoongi is so focused he doesn’t hear them at all and they’re all used to this, aren’t offended by it in the slightest. they know to just shoot him a text and wait for him to respond eventually unless it’s an actual emergency and they need to call him, genuinely need his attention right now. 

sometimes they yell and sometimes he hears them and sometimes he doesn’t. again, they don’t mind. they know what he’s like when he’s working and he has always been this way so it was easy to get used to. 

but a few times now, namjoon has been there to witness the one exchange that seems to differ from this pattern. 

the bell rings and yoongi either ignores it or doesn’t hear it at all and namjoon doesn’t think much of it either way. but then a voice follows. 

“yoongi hyung, it’s me,” taehyung calls and yoongi straightens up in his chair so fast that it spooks namjoon. yoongi doesn’t usually move that fast for anyone or anything. before namjoon even has time to ask ‘just what in the fuck was that’ yoongi is up out of his seat and crossing the floor, yanking the door open and leaning out to grab taehyung by the wrist. 

namjoon nearly falls out of his chair he’s so shocked. and also because he’s craning to see what’s going on. 

“you need something?” yoongi all but demands and taehyung looks down at the hand yoongi has banded around his wrist and then looks up into his face, grins at him like the sun sets - so slow you can’t really see it happening, but one minute it’s there and the next it’s not, only taehyung’s smile blossoms in the reverse. 

“just wanted to see you, hyung,” taehyung says, tugging his wrist out of yoongi’s grasp so he can slide his fingers down between yoongi’s instead, get them holding hands like yoongi always seems to want, though he pretends otherwise, though he acts like taehyung is doing it for himself and not for yoongi. 

“oh,” yoongi says, low and breathy and namjoon is kind of embarrassed for him, kind of embarrassed for himself because he’d have said the same thing the exact same way. “well. namjoon is here, so.” 

that gives namjoon pause. should he leave? what would have happened if he wasn’t here? does something happen in here between them when no one else is around? does anyone else know about it? could namjoon maybe stay and watch? 

“that’s okay, hyung,” taehyung says, swinging their joined hands a little and stepping in. namjoon can’t see from this angle, but it kind of seems like taehyung maybe just kissed yoongi. namjoon can’t tell which of the three of them gasps. “just wanted to see you,” taehyung says again and then he’s gone and yoongi stands in the doorway for a beat longer, for two more, for a full eight count. 

when he comes back to the desk he’s blushing and his jaw is clenched and namjoon hates that he struggles with this so much. 

“you don’t have to be embarrassed, hyung,” namjoon says and yoongi looks up at him sharply, eyes hard like he thinks namjoon is winding up to teasing him, “no, really,” namjoon insists earnestly, deadly serious about this, “he makes us all a little crazy these days. it’s nothing to be ashamed of. you’re not weak for being whipped for him. honestly.” 

yoongi deflates at that, slumping into his chair and rolling his eyes and then sitting up to get back to work. 

“you’re lucky you’re so cute, joon-ah,” yoongi says, not looking away from the monitor. but when namjoon turns to look at him, head tilted, he speaks again. “i’m whipped for all of you, you idiot.” 

his cheeks pink up again and he’s very determinedly not looking at namjoon and namjoon kind of wants to push him to the floor and roll around on top of him because he’s so cute namjoon is going to die. 

“oh. okay,” namjoon says, because he hadn’t realized that this was something yoongi would admit to, he hadn’t even really thought about how true it really was until right now and now he’s committed to never for one second forgetting it again. “but the kim taehyung thing though. still it’s own separate problem, am i right?” 

yoongi snorts and it’s adorable. 

“kim taehyung has always been a goddamn problem,” he says fondly, “but now that he knows it? feels like i barely make it out of some days alive,” yoongi laments, but in a worn and easy way. like it’s the worst fate that could befall a man, but he is resigned to it, he has accepted and committed himself to it. 

“hey, do you think taehyung and hoseok are fucking?” yoongi asks, finally turning to face namjoon and namjoon thinks about it. 

“i mean... i don’t know. i don’t think so. but i kind of hope so? is that weird?” namjoon asks. 

yoongi just shrugs and turns back to the monitor again. 

“probably. but is anything about any of us not weird?” 

and that’s probably a fair point, all things considered, so namjoon just shrugs too and then they both get back to work. 

taehyung doesn’t show up again that day, but he shows up with pretty surprising regularity when namjoon is around, which probably suggests that he shows up fairly often in general. 

yoongi never shoos him off but never invites him in either, when namjoon is there. 

there’s always a strange sense of push and pull between the two of them; yoongi trying harder than the rest of them to hold onto the space between him and taehyung, but reaching out for him in ways that are the loudest, the clearest calls for contact, too. 

taehyung always comes, when yoongi seeks him out. 

and taehyung goes, when yoongi tells him to. 

because that’s the truly infuriating thing about taehyung and what this has become. 

he’s hot as the surface of the sun itself and he knows it too. he doesn’t try to hide it, doesn’t deny it or get coy about it like jimin does, like most people would. 

but he doesn’t always seem to realize how it effects the rest of them, doesn’t always look to know that they don’t just fall at his feet because they adore him, but because every single one of them is trying to win their way into his bed. _and_ because they adore him. 

and on the one hand - thank fucking god. thank every possibly deity that could exist, that ever has been or will come to be that taehyung is happy to benefit from it, but doesn’t seem to want to push it, hasn’t thus far been inclined to abuse it. because he’d ruin them. he’d take every single one of them down and they’d thank him for it in turn and then politely ask for more. 

but on the other hand, the constantly mounting tension is kind of exhausting; thick enough to choke on most days, big enough to be daunting now. 

namjoon is decidedly frightened, kind of frustrated and super fucking horny. 

it’s like a fun little throwback to when they were rookies still, except for how namjoon is an adult now and hasn’t had to wrestle so hard with his own wants for years. 

it’s exhausting in a brand new way. 

and namjoon doesn’t know when it’s going to end. 

he’s pretty excited to see how it does, though. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/


	2. taehyung/hoseok - all he do is catch it and release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “so,” taehyung finally says, throwing himself down to lie across the end of his bed. he tucks his arms behind his head, which hoseok spares a moment to scream inside his own head about and then he turns to look directly at hoseok and hoseok gets uncomfortably close to screaming out loud. 
> 
> this is why taehyung has had him on his toes for years now. this is why most days he takes one look at taehyung and feels like he should _run_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes, notes. okay. 
> 
> 1) generally i write safe sex but i'm forgoing it in this one. please don't use fanfiction as a guide for sex in any way, shape or form and always use protection. here let us assume that a conversation took place off-screen about how they've always used protection with other sexual partners and as a group get sti screened regularly. 
> 
> 2) this was so fun to write oh my goodness. i was yelling on twitter almost always because i really at points here felt like the characters had a very definite idea of where things were going with this even when i didn't and that's cool af. at one point i said out loud to one character "okay you can have a little making out, even though it's not in the notes. just as a treat." 
> 
> maybe i have lost my mind but i'm enjoying myself so it's okay. 
> 
> 3) i'm still planning on sticking to the every two days posting schedule but things already got strained for me personally today because of the whole pandemic situation so i might end up spacing it out a little more but as is i wrote 11k for you in 36 hours because i love you and i want you to have nice things. (@maye but also at anyone who is reading this) 
> 
> 4) ..... profit? 
> 
> 5) don't take creep shots of your friends making out that's weird. you know who you are. 
> 
> ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

hoseok is running scared. 

hoseok is a twenty five year old man, a successful and accomplished musician - a worldwide sensation, some might say - and he’s breaking out in a sweat right now because his bandmate, his close friend of eight years is so hot. 

it is not ideal. 

it’s not something hoseok is proud of. 

but taehyung is stretched out next to him, his ass perched on hoseok’s thigh and only his shoulderblades touching the floor. his back is arched in the air, his hips tilted up and twisting from one side to the other while he moans out loud. 

“uuuuungh,” taehyung moans and hoseok is grateful that taehyung has his head tipped back against the floor because it means he can’t see his face. “how do i even get so stiff when we’re on the go all fucking day?” taehyung wants to know and hoseok would love to be able to answer him but he’s too busy looking at the long line of taehyung’s throat and trying not to swallow his own tongue instead. 

taehyung lifts his arms over his head and his shirt rides up and to recap; hoseok is sitting on the floor with one of his best friends using his leg as a foam roller and stretching is probably a bigger priority in hoseok’s life than it is in anyone else’s on earth but not like this, this is just too much entirely. 

which is why it is with both bafflement and unfolding horror that hoseok watches as his hands reach out and take hold of taehyung’s hips. they’re bare now, the waistband of his sweatpants slipping obscenely low and his shirt fallen up to fold around his ribs. the dip of his belly is exposed, just lying there unclothed for the whole world to see except it’s only the two of them in here, it’s only hoseok that’s getting to look and that’s hoseok’s excuse. for once being the only one who gets to lay eyes on taehyung is not a gift horse to be looked in the mouth and knowing that taehyung is laid out like this for him alone is the closest thing to an explanation hoseok has got for how he feels like he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing but still can’t stop, can’t even control himself in this moment. 

he lets his thumbs brush down along the lines of taehyung’s hip bones before he takes a proper hold of him and lets his grip get firm. 

“make sure your shoulders are stretched out, i’ll keep you still,” he says, he thinks, he’s pretty sure. he must say something because taehyung is lifting his head from the floor to look at him and then nodding, dropping back down and stretching again, this time with his hips and ass held still, held down by hoseok’s hands so only his waist can twist with it when he lifts one shoulder up off the floor and then the other, rocking slowly from side to side. 

“feel good?” hoseok asks because sure he’s trying to stay as still as possible so taehyung won’t notice that he’s half hard in his shorts but stretching is important, their bodies are their livelihood and hoseok is committed to making sure they treat them right. he’d treat taehyung’s body so, so good, he thinks, but then he’s mentally backhanding himself across the face and looking at the grain of the studio floor so he doesn’t look at his hands on taehyung’s hips, doesn’t think about how good it feels to touch his bare skin. 

“yeah hyung, feels great,” taehyung says and his head is tipped so far back that all hoseok can see is his chin and just the tiniest hint of his mouth, a peek of his tongue when taehyung licks his lips. hoseok grinds his teeth together. 

“what about you hyung?” taehyung asks, finally falling still in his hands but not moving to sit up, just tilting his head to one side to look at hoseok and staying exactly where he is. 

“huh?” hoseok asks, because he’d been wrapping up his stretches when taehyung came in, he’s done with his warm up already. 

“does it feel good for you hyung?” taehyung asks and he lifts one eyebrow and then glances down. 

hoseok can’t actually tell if taehyung is looking at hoseok’s hands, still cupped around his hips and holding him tight, or at hoseok’s crotch, where there isn’t exactly nothing to see, to put it delicately. 

it doesn’t really matter, though, because either way the answer is the same. 

“yeah,” hoseok says, “you feel good,” he says, because why the fuck not, it’s not like it’s news to taehyung (or anyone else) that hoseok wants him. 

taehyung laughs at him, but it’s a fond thing, a deep chuckle of amusement that hoseok feels when it makes taehyung rock a little in his hands. 

“you’re always so honest, hyung,” taehyung says, sounding kind of amazed and hoseok doesn’t know why, because he’s always been that way. 

hoseok shrugs. 

“what’s the point in lying? it’s easier to just tell the truth. you know me well enough to be able to tell, anyway.” 

taehyung sits up, shoulders coming up off the floor quick and easy and it is purely with professional interest that hoseok notes how nicely flexible taehyung is. 

it’s with something else entirely that hoseok looks at taehyung when he shifts so his ass slides off hoseok’s thigh and he’s sitting between hoseok’s legs now, bracing himself with his hands on the floor behind him and barely an inch of space between their faces. 

“if it’s so easy then why don’t you just ask for what you want, hyung?” taehyung says and hoseok freezes up. 

hoseok doesn’t know what to say, can’t speak, can’t look away, can only stare as taehyung merely peers at him; looks calmly right at hoseok like he’s mildly interesting to him, like he’s just barely enough to hold his attention. 

hoseok doesn’t say anything and taehyung doesn’t seem at all surprised by that. 

hoseok doesn’t know which of those two things disappoints him more. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

in the early days, taehyung had been the first one of them to come to hoseok for advice on self confidence and oh how that makes hoseok laugh to remember now. 

they’d all been nervous pretty much constantly back then, but hoseok just happened to be the first one to learn the age old truth that if you faked your confidence hard enough, it was possible to not only fool everyone around you but also trick even yourself into believing that it was true. 

it’s a performance thing for hoseok and he’s always been very, very good at that part of their job. 

“how do you do that, hyung?” taehyung had asked him, once upon a time, aeons ago it seems like and hoseok hadn’t understood, at first. 

“you just have to use your knee,” he’d started, about to launch into a practical demonstration of the part of the choreography they’d been practicing that day but taehyung had stopped him with a shake of his head and then his hand on hoseok’s chin, directing his gaze back to the mirror they’d been standing in front of. 

“not the move, hyung. your face. that look,” taehyung had gestured at hoseok’s face, still set in its patented ‘dance related determination’ mode. “when you dance you look like you’ve never doubted anything for a day in your life. you look so completely sure. of everything, of yourself. you move like you know that everyone who sees you wants you. how do you do that?” 

taehyung had been a baby still. hoseok hadn’t been that far off from his own infant days, either. and this was a weird part of what they were expected to do, because it’s hard to project an air of knowing you’re the most fuckable person on earth when you don’t have the time or opportunity to fuck anyone and were in a roundabout sort of way contractually obligated not to fuck anyone for several years more at least. 

but it had been and still is a part of their job.

“oh,” he’d said, thinking for a moment, trying to put into words what he wanted to say to taehyung. “well … you kind of just explained it yourself, tae. all you have to do is think of yourself as someone that everyone wants and then let yourself believe that. someone wants you more than anyone else in the world, probably. just imagine that everyone feels that way about you. it’s not easy at first, but the harder you practice at it the longer you’ll find yourself being able to hold it. it’ll come in moments, at the start, just bits and pieces but eventually you’ll be able to lock it down for a whole song. for two or three, even.” 

“really?” taehyung had asked, sceptical and his hair had been tied up in an apple pony on the top of his head and he’d been wearing a knock off supreme jersey that was more holes than actual material and he’d had a little teenage acne still on the rounds of his cheeks but even then, hoseok hadn’t worried about taehyung’s ability to pull this off. 

“absolutely,” hoseok had assured him and he’d been right. 

he’d also been setting his future self up for a world of pain. 

hindsight, hoseok had learned, is a fucking bitch. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

it sucks, hoseok thinks, that taehyung has by now learned from actual experience that all that blustering teenage bravado hoseok had coached him through was nothing but the god’s honest truth, in his case. 

hoseok has been around, hoseok has seen and indeed done things, he has learned a lot in the intervening years. 

but taehyung has - in quintessential taehyung fashion - pretty easily transitioned from being the student to not so much the teacher, but someone that the teacher really desperately wants to fuck. 

“has anyone ever turned you down?” hoseok finds himself asking, incredulous but morbidly curious one night when it’s just him and taehyung and jungkook still up drinking. well, it’s taehyung and jungkook still up drinking, hoseok switching his beer out for apple juice after three bottles because he’s not an idiot. “like, have you ever experienced wanting someone and them telling you they weren’t down?” 

he’s never seen taehyung strike out. he has, however, seen taehyung pick up accidentally. he’s seen taehyung pick up when he wasn’t trying, when he was actively try not to, even. it’s fascinating and upsetting. 

jungkook looks between hoseok and taehyung with wide eyes, not like ‘actual baby jungkook’ wide, but something closer to ‘oh shit’ wide. hoseok had remained undeterred. 

taehyung had rolled his eyes. 

“do you really think i’m out here in the world having literally everyone i want just fall at my feet? what kind of manga are you reading these days, hyung? maybe don’t lend it to jungkook.” 

“hey,” jungkook interjected, hurt, but they’d both ignored him. 

“i’ve never seen anyone tell you no,” hoseok insisted. “i’ve never seen you have to do much more than fucking nod.” it’s true and it’s terrible. hoseok’s life is so hard. 

“that doesn’t mean i get everyone i want,” taehyung pointed out and like technically speaking, hoseok could see what he meant, but he’d also thought that taehyung was just dodging the question because what was he trying to suggest here? that just because he hadn’t met every single person on earth, just because there had to be people still out there that he would want but hadn’t been introduced to yet and thus had not been able to have, that his life was cursed or difficult somehow? 

that was just stupid. 

“that’s stupid,” hoseok had said. “so you’d need to meet everyone on the planet before you claim your perfect record, is that what you’re saying?” 

jungkook had been fiddling with the label on his bottle of wine, somehow seeming both sullen and uninterested. 

“that’s not what i’m saying at all,” taehyung had said and hoseok hadn’t understood. 

“i don’t understand,” he’d said and taehyung had rolled his eyes yet again. it wasn’t helpful and it wasn’t cute. it just made hoseok think about what he’d have to do to get taehyung’s eyes to roll up into his head in pleasure and as he’d said - not helpful. not cute. kind of a direct challenge, actually, which was rude when hoseok couldn’t take it up. 

“has it occurred to you, hobi hyung, that there are people who i want that haven’t propositioned me?” he’d seemed genuinely curious, had said it patiently, like he’d thought hoseok would need a minute to wrap his mind around the concept and that had been helpful, because hoseok had found that he very much needed that minute, thanks. 

“so like,” he’d ventured, after a moment’s serious contemplation, “there are theoretically people you’ve met and wanted to bang but they haven’t offered?” 

that sounds fake as fuck to hoseok. he’s seen shopkeepers throw themselves at taehyung. he’s seen people who don’t speak korean throw themselves at taehyung. they have to be careful about which food places they order from when taehyung is collecting it because hoseok has seen middle aged and married delivery guys throw themselves at taehyung. 

so even the idea that there are people who have met taehyung and not tried it on with him is bizarre enough to hoseok, but the thought that there were people taehyung wanted and presumably did not hide this fact from who just … hadn’t taken him up on that? 

preposterous. 

“fucking bullshit,” hoseok had said and both taehyung and jungkook had sighed. taehyung in what seemed like frustration, jungkook in something closer to that noise anime girls make when the protagonist beats the shit out of some jerk that had been bothering her. it’s breathy and yearning and hoseok slides a look jungkook’s way because honestly what the fuck? 

it’s only when he’s cleaning up after they’ve both gone to bed that he thinks about how close taehyung and jungkook had been sitting on the couch and puts two and two together. well, it’s not so much how close they’d been sitting as it is the pair of jungkook’s underwear he finds stuffed down between the cushions coupled with that fact. 

and like, honestly? 

what the _fuck_.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

hoseok is walking by a random doorway in the big hit building when a hand shoots out to drag him inside. 

he’s both surprised and not at all surprised to find yoongi towing him into a currently empty office. he’s surprised because yoongi doesn’t really go looking for people, he’s moreso the person others go looking for and he’s not surprised at all because it feels distinctly feline, just snagging someone as they walk past and yoongi is nothing if not cat like. which is to say - strange, lazy, too smart for his own good and clawed. 

“are you fucking taehyung?” he demands when he’s got hoseok pushed down into an office chair and is towering over him. sort of. it’s more like a slightly intimidating lean. but hoseok is still startled, just by what he’s said rather than how he said it. 

“uh no? what the hell?” 

yoongi doesn’t seem to have been expecting this answer. 

“oh,” he says, deflating visibly. he slumps against the desk they’ve commandeered. for a purpose that’s still unclear to hoseok. “really?” 

“uh, yeah,” hoseok says and it sounds more like he’s just said ‘duuuuuuh’ which is cool, because that’s what he’d meant. “i’m pretty sure i’d have noticed if i was fucking taehyung. i’m pretty sure you’d notice too, hyung.” 

“i really thought that if anyone …” yoongi is frowning, looking hoseok up and down like he’s disappointed in him. and honestly that kind of stings. “you’re seriously not?” 

“definitely not,” hoseok assures him and that makes yoongi frown harder. 

“well, damn. i’m sorry then, i guess.” 

hoseok laughs at that. 

“sorry that you asked? or sorry that i’m not fucking taehyung?” 

yoongi’s face glitches for a second. 

“uhhh. both?” 

and that’s fair. 

“cool,” hoseok says, even though it’s really not. “wait - are _you_ fucking taehyung?” is this a jealousy thing? did yoongi think taehyung was cheating on him with hoseok? that’s kind of messed up. but it’s just plain strange too. hoseok wouldn’t mind if he was fucking taehyung and taehyung wanted to fuck yoongi too. seems kind of mean of yoongi to want to keep all of that for himself. 

but yoongi laughs. 

“definitely not,” yoongi says and hoseok can tell from how he says it that he’s sad about it. 

“sorry, hyung. that sucks,” hoseok says, because it does. 

“yeah,” yoongi says, “hey do you think taehyung is fucking jimin?” 

hoseok doesn’t have to think about that. 

“i mean, probably. it’s kind of always seemed like they are? but they’re … them. they’ve always been like that.” what hoseok means is that jimin and taehyung have always had the weird energy that taehyung is slowly building up with all of them, now. it would be stranger to him to think that they weren’t banging. 

“yeah, true,” yoongi agrees, still seeming to muse on something. “do you think that’s like … an exclusive thing?” 

hoseok doesn’t know how it could be. he knows for a fact that they’ve both fucked other people. he’s also holding out hope that he’ll get to fuck both of them too, eventually. and yoongi. and definitely seokjin. and at that point it’d just be rude to leave namjoon and jungkook out. 

“absolutely not,” hoseok tells him, half honestly, half pure optimism. 

“cool,” yoongi concludes and hoseok can only nod. 

“you wanna go grab some food?” 

yoongi raises an eyebrow at him. 

“jung hoseok are you asking me out on a date?” 

and that’s ridiculous. it’s ridiculous both because this is a joke that yoongi has been making for years now, every single time just the two of them do anything together alone but it’s probably more ridiculous for how hoseok has been answering ‘yes’ every single time since yoongi first asked and yet here they are, still not dating. 

“absolutely,” hoseok says, standing up and holding out a hand until yoongi puts his in it. “but i must warn you, i’ve got a lot of super annoying roommates so if you wanna bang me after we’ll have to go to your place.” 

yoongi laughs at him and it’s a good look for him, pretty much every look is a good one on yoongi but delight is a special one. 

it sucks that yoongi isn’t sleeping with taehyung, hoseok thinks. 

it sucks that yoongi thinks hoseok is joking about sleeping with him, too. 

hoseok can’t even really decipher which of these facts bothers him more, or where either of them fall against the similarly sucky fact that hoseok isn’t sleeping with taehyung either. 

all in all, there’s just not enough fucking going on in this band, hoseok decides. 

that’s what it seems to boil down to, at the lowest common denominator. 

and if hoseok’s grasp of math is in any way reliable, it seems to him that there’s only one viable solution to that issue. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

“hey hobi,” namjoon says, wandering in with his work laptop under one arm and setting up shop next to where hoseok is lying on the couch, kind of watching tv, mostly napping. 

“hey babe,” hoseok says, smiling softly at namjoon and then closing his eyes again, turning his face into the cushion a little more. he’s comfy as fuck and still half asleep and namjoon is a babe, so fucking sue him for saying so. 

“ooookay,” is all namjoon says, kind of awkward, kind of adorable and hoseok is still smiling when he falls back asleep. 

the slam of the front door is what wakes him. 

“what the actual fuck,” he half-shouts, his heart fucking pounding in his chest and his body as much on the floor as it on the couch, now. 

namjoon stands up and comes close to help him back onto the cushions, his hand on hoseok’s bare knee and strong at his elbow, holding him up. 

“it’s just jimin and taehyung,” namjoon says, pulling a blanket hoseok hadn’t noticed was laid out on top of him now back up over his shoulders. “go back to sleep. i’ll tell them to keep it down.” namjoon smooths hoseok’s hair back out of his face and hoseok is awake now, for better or for worse, so he takes the blanket off and folds it up over the back of the couch, sits up properly and rubs at his eyes. 

“s’fine. if i sleep too much now i won’t sleep tonight, anyway. what’s going on with them?” 

namjoon’s brows furrow. 

“i didn’t really get all of it, jimin just zoomed by muttering darkly about communal spaces and basic decency and then he was out the door and taehyung was yelling after him.” 

so nothing new, then. nothing unusual, for them. 

taehyung walks by then, completely and totally naked and both hoseok and namjoon turn to look and then watch in silence as he walks through the living room without acknowledging either of them. he’s wet, probably just out of the shower and his hair is combed back out of his face and held there by a hair band and his body is … art, honestly. he’s all lean muscle, easy strength, miles of smooth, tanned skin and he just walks around like that, so fucking comfortable in his own body that he looks just as good with his clothes off as he does when he’s wearing thousands of dollars worth of designer goods. it’s not fair. it’s not right. 

namjoon whimpers. 

“why the fuck would jimin run away from all that?” hoseok has to ask as soon as taehyung is out of earshot. “aren’t they already banging? did he forget and then remember again and get spooked?” 

“nah, they’re not fucking,” namjoon says and hoseok must still be asleep. hoseok might be in a coma actually, because it sounds like namjoon just said taehyung and jimin aren’t fucking and that’s simply not a reality hoseok is familiar with. 

“did they break up?” that would be terrible. that would be so genuinely awful that hoseok wouldn’t even be able to bring himself to fuck them on the rebound. probably. he’d like to think so, at least. 

“they were never together. they’ve never even kissed. i asked,” namjoon says, sitting down heavily next to hoseok and hoseok’s entire world is being rocked by this, he needs some kind of stability more than he’s ever needed anything in his life so he grabs namjoon’s hand and holds it between both of his own, tucks their stacked hands between his thighs for safe keeping. 

“you asked?” that’s such a fucking namjoon thing to do. hoseok can actually picture it - namjoon pushing his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose and sitting taehyung and jimin down for a quick informal chat on their relationship status. 

“yeah. because it seemed like they were.” 

“and you wanted to be sure? why? in case it fucked things up for the group?” namjoon is responsible as hell. he’s always out way ahead of any potential problem that could get in their way and hoseok admires the shit out of him for that. 

“nah. cus i wanted to make sure i wouldn’t be stepping on any toes if i asked taehyung to fuck me.” 

hoseok blinks. 

“you said you wanted what now?” 

namjoon, absurdly, looks kind of guilty about it. he’s pouting at hoseok. hoseok might be having a stroke. 

“does that change how you think of me?” namjoon asks, still pouting and it makes it sound almost like he’s using aegyo when he speaks. it’s got jeon jungkook’s influence written all over it and hoseok fucking hates their entire maknae line almost as much as he hates that he hasn’t gotten to fuck their entire maknae line. yet. 

“um, no? not at all? do i strike you as someone who doesn’t also want to fuck taehyung? because if i do then i’ve been horribly misrepresenting myself to the world.” 

namjoon giggles. and then he shifts on the couch, leaning in so the hand that isn’t already between hoseok’s legs can start trailing a slow, deliberate path up along the inseam of his shorts. 

“what if i told you it wasn’t only taehyung that i wanted?” he’s looking up at hoseok from beneath his eyelashes and hoseok kind of wants to look around for the camera because what the fuck is happening, when did the members of this group decide to band together to take him down and why didn’t they decide to do it way, way before now? 

“you want jimin as well?” hoseok asks and namjoon bites his lip and nods. it’s criminally fucking hot. it’s nothing short of totally insane how good namjoon looks sitting here, shyly admitting things to hoseok like maybe he’s a little unsure, a little embarrassed, but far too into whatever the fuck this is to slow down or stop. 

“what about yoongi? you want him too?” hoseok asks, taking namjoon’s chin in his hand and tilting his face up, lifting it into the light so he can see him better. it has the added bonus of leaving namjoon’s captive hand pressed up between hoseok’s thighs only buffered on one side now by his own hand. 

“yeah, i do. i really, really do, hope-ah,” namjoon says and then both of his hands are between hoseok’s thighs, pushing them open, pushing them apart so he can throw a knee over hoseok’s and climb in between them. he’s surprisingly graceful about it when he makes himself comfortable, lying on his stomach between hoseok’s legs, his chin propped up on hoseok’s breastbone when he pushes hoseok to lie back down on the couch and settles over him. 

“and ‘guk? jin?” hoseok asks, forcing himself to stay on track so he can’t derail all of this before it ever even gets anywhere interesting. 

namjoon nods again, brings both his hands up to stack them under his chin. he shifts up a little when he does it, wriggles up over hoseok’s crotch because that’s their primary point of contact; namjoon’s waist between hoseok’s legs, his weight balanced in the cradle of hoseok’s hips. it would be maddening if hoseok wasn’t entirely distracted by how the way he moves brings him closer, gets his mouth where hoseok could absolutely reach it if he tried to, if he wanted to. 

hoseok wants to. 

“what about me, namjoon-ah?” he asks, keeping his hands at his sides, gripping the cushions of the couch a little so he doesn’t fist his hands in namjoon’s hair and do something stupid like try to devour him instead. “do you want me?” 

“so bad, hope-ah. want you so bad,” namjoon whispers against hoseok’s mouth and hoseok doesn’t even realize that he’s sitting up, that he’s leaning in, but they’re kissing now and his heart is beating so fast that his pulse is pounding in his ears and namjoon’s tongue is in his mouth and his hands are in namjoon’s back pockets, his fingers are grabbing hold of namjoon’s ass and fucking squeezing and namjoon moans, low in his throat and hoseok is gonna lose his mind in five seconds because of this, he’s about to shove namjoon off of him, shove him onto the floor and follow him down and fucking ruin him, but - 

“what the fuck are you doing?” 

hoseok jerks away, hits his head on the arm of the couch but namjoon just tries to follow him, keeps straining to get back at his mouth and hoseok has to actually sit up to deter him even though that just means he’s sitting up with namjoon lying in his lap now and this really wasn’t a good idea at all. 

“seriously? in the living room?” 

seokjin is looking down at them over the back of the couch. he hasn’t got a shirt on and he’s eating a bowl of cereal, peering down at them like they’re a mildly entertaining tv show. 

hoseok shrugs. namjoon hides his face. against hoseok’s dick, because _he’s_ a dick. 

“okey dokey. maybe try to come up with a better explanation if you’re planning on doing this more often, though. i’m into it, but the others might have questions,” he says mildly, wandering off when he’s finished. 

“so, uh,” hoseok says after a minute of silence has passed and namjoon doesn’t seem to be inclined to remove his face from the crotch of hoseok’s shorts. 

he peeks up at hoseok then and his cheeks are flushed and his mouth is red and wet and his hair’s already a wreck so hoseok almost feels like he’d be nothing but justified in grabbing a handful of it and directing that mouth right back to his dick, but now that a pause has been created where no pause should ever have existed - fuck seokjin - they should probably use it. 

“that happened,” hoseok concludes and he sounds impressed and so sue him, he is. it’s not like he’d woken up this morning knowing he was going to make out with namjoon today. someone should have warned him, where was the heads up about this in his horoscope this week? he’d at least have put on nicer clothes or like, no clothes at all. 

“that was _fun_ ,” namjoon says and hoseok laughs and ruffles his hair. 

“rude of you to be so cute when you’re also super fucking hot, 'joon-ah,” hoseok says and namjoon dimples at him. hoseok swoons a little but it’s fine he can be embarrassed about it when namjoon isn’t still in his lap. 

namjoon climbs up onto his hands and knees and hovers over hoseok for a second to drop a kiss on his forehead, then on the tip of his nose and finally, briefly, presses their mouths together again. 

“thanks for not slut shaming me, hope-ah,” he says, sitting back on the couch tragically out of reach but it’s probably for the best, it’s the middle of the day and anyone could come by, they’ve already been walked in on once and they seem to have been making out because they both want to fuck taehyung and also the entire rest of the group so that’s a lot. there’s a decent amount of things to unpack, there. 

“i would never, 'joon-ah,” hoseok says, folding his legs up under himself and turning to face the tv, reaching for the remote control. “and if anyone else ever does, tell me so i can yell at them and then make out with you about it, ‘kay?” 

“will do. thanks hobi,” namjoon says and then he’s settling next to hoseok, resting his head against his shoulder and picking his laptop up off the coffee table to get back to work. 

hoseok still lowkey wants to jump him, but he’s pretty accustomed to sitting still next to people he wants to jump at this point, so it’s just another routine afternoon for him. 

apart from the part where he kissed namjoon. 

and found out that he’s got at least one other member definitely on board for a hypothetical bangtan orgy and two fairly solid looking ‘probably’s in yoongi and seokjin, too. 

so in that regard, today is one for the books. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

hoseok doesn’t know for sure that taehyung will come looking for him, but he has an inkling. 

he doesn’t know exactly what’s gonna go down, or how or why, but he’s not surprised when taehyung barely lets him get his shoes off when he comes back from his dance class before he’s ordering hoseok to his room with a significant look and a small nod. 

it’s an order because that’s how hoseok takes it, not because taehyung ever tells any of them what to do. nah, things would never be that simple for hoseok. he’s not that lucky. 

taehyung’s room is nice, hoseok thinks, glancing around with interest now that he’s here because he this is the one room in the house he’s visited the least. he gives this place a wide berth out of some semblance of self preservation. 

but he’s here. and he’s hoping, hoping, hoping that he finds excuse enough to throw himself to the wolves now that he is. otherwise, he’s going to do it anyway and that will be harder to explain, harder still to defend. 

“sit down hyung, i’m not gonna bite,” taehyung says, gesturing to his bed and then turning away to peel his sweater off and hoseok is already fighting hard to not say ‘but please, please do,’ so yeah, he’s fucked. god, he hopes he gets fucked. 

“was there something you wanted to talk about?” hoseok asks. he makes himself comfortable on taehyung’s bed, sitting up against the headboard with his legs crossed beneath him, his hands on his ankles so he doesn’t grab for taehyung’s pillows and try to smother himself with one. 

taehyung only hums, still pottering around in front of his wardrobe, walking back and forth between his room and his bathroom until he’s changed into some sweats and a loose white tee, barefoot and bare faced, his hair brushed and the top half of it tied back out of his face. he looks soft, dressed down and comfortable, homely and totally at ease. he’s always totally at ease, of course, because he’s a living and breathing adonis so why wouldn’t he be, but when he’s stripped back like this, somewhere he’s totally comfortable with only the people who know him best, he’s the worst he ever gets. any tiny semblance of self presentation he would otherwise allude to falls away entirely and he’s just completely, brutally himself. unapologetic in a way that makes hoseok feels bruised. when he sees taehyung like this, something in the very center of him throbs and every time it does, it gets deeper, hurts so nicely in a way that ramps up and up and up until he’s left like this, hoping and praying that taehyung will finally, finally do something about it because hoseok doesn’t know how to. 

“so,” taehyung finally says, throwing himself down to lie across the end of his bed. he tucks his arms behind his head, which hoseok spares a moment to scream inside his own head about and then he turns to look directly at hoseok and hoseok gets uncomfortably close to screaming out loud. 

this is why taehyung has had him on his toes for years now. this is why most days he takes one look at taehyung and feels like he should _run_. 

hoseok doesn’t have a problem with being honest. hoseok doesn’t bother trying to hide that he wants taehyung. hoseok isn’t self conscious per se, not to any kind of crippling extent. he knows that even if taehyung isn’t into him, he won’t be a dick about it. hoseok wouldn’t be crushed by that. but damn, would he be sad. because he’s pretty sure that sex with taehyung would be genuinely life changing and that’s what gives him pause, that’s what makes him nervous. he wants it so bad that all this time, just the idea of it - the mere possibility, the premise alone - was enough for him, if the alternative was blurting out what he wanted and finding out he couldn’t have it. 

“i heard a really interesting thing today, hyung” taehyung says and his face is tilted perfectly into the low light of the lamps that are on either side of his bed, his jaw is lifted high and so sharp, so perfectly lovely and just looking at his mouth makes hoseok feel like swearing. 

“you did?” hoseok asks, wondering where the fuck this is going because knowing taehyung, he’s either about to tell hoseok some secondhand marine life facts that he got from namjoon or he’s going to want to play hoseok some cool new song he heard and hoseok loves finding new music, he’s as big a fan of shrimp facts as the next guy but it feels like every time they have one of these exchanges his patience wears just a little bit thinner and he doesn’t know how much he’s got left in him. it feels like he’s been running on the fumes of it for a while now. 

“mhmm,” taehyung says and his eyes haven’t left hoseok’s yet and hoseok feels kind of like taehyung is pinning him down even though he’s not touching him at all. “i heard you and our esteemed leader were spotted getting down and dirty on the living room couch earlier today.” 

and oh. uhhhh. 

“ah,” hoseok says and then his brain just throws up a peace sign and ducks out for a late dinner. 

“that’s it? you don’t have anything else to say?” taehyung asks and he’s not being judgemental or weird about it, he sounds nothing but patient; interested without pressing but hoseok still finds himself wanting to apologize even though he’s not sorry. 

“that … did happen?” hoseok says finally and taehyung is still staring at him and it’s tense and it’s charged and hoseok for one thinks a much better alternative to this would be if he could just be face down getting fucked into oblivion already. “is that - is it an issue for you? we just made out a little, it wasn’t a big deal.” 

“it looked pretty serious, hyung,” taehyung says and hoseok doesn’t even have to ask, only has to look mildly confused for a quick sec before taehyung is taking his phone out of his pocket, pulling something up on it and then holding it out so hoseok can see. and yep, those are pictures of him and namjoon making out on the couch. damn, joon looks good between hoseok’s legs. but - 

“who the fuck -”

“jungkook. obviously,” taehyung says and yeah, fair. if anyone was gonna take sneak pics of some weird shit they came across and wanted to commemorate, it would be jungkook. he’s a hot little nerd that way. fucker. 

“huh. okay. send me those. but like - is this really a surprise to you? why are we even talking about this?” hoseok is just genuinely curious. he’s always thought that their bond and total lack of boundaries would lend well to an environment where they could all just fuck around with each other and not have it be a big deal but maybe that was just wishful thinking. 

“i wish jungkook had filmed it. the one time he manages to put his camera down would be when i actually wanted him to use it, huh?” taehyung says and hoseok agrees in principle, he’s with it for sure but he also doesn’t know where the fuck this is going and it’s making him sweat a little. he’s been in taehyung’s room for too long. he’s been looking at taehyung for too long. they’re alone and they’re on a bed and hoseok has spent years talking himself out of asking for what he wants and every day that just gets him closer and closer to begging for it. 

“if it happens again, i’ll see if jungkook is free?” hoseok says because if that’s what taehyung wants, hoseok is happy to provide. whatever taehyung wants, hoseok wants to give him. “why do you wanna see that, though? are you into -” 

(- namjoon,” hoseok is going to finish, because to the very end, he is a coward, terrified of his own desires.) 

“i wanna see how he did it,” taehyung says, tossing his phone away onto the carpetted floor and lying back down, hands still folding behind his head but his face angled up to the ceiling now, not looking at hoseok. “i want to figure out how namjoon got you to finally take what you want, hyung.” 

“why?” hoseok asks, breathless now, nothing inside of him at all besides a handful of sharp little words, ‘why’ and ‘please’ and ‘ _please_.’ 

“so i can do it too. so i know what i have to do or say to get you to let me touch you,” taehyung says and hoseok’s whole body shivers, pulses with possibility, every little bit of him just a place where taehyung might want to touch him, now. “because you want me to, don’t you, hyung?” 

and there it is. a direct question. here they are, taehyung giving hoseok exactly what’s he been terrified of, everything he’s been braced for and wanting for years now.

“yes,” hoseok says and it’s just one syllable but it rings out between them like a church bell. 

taehyung nods because he knew that, hoseok knew he knew it. 

and then taehyung sits up, grabs hoseok by his ankles and pulls him down the bed until he’s got him caged beneath him, taehyung over him on his hands and knees. he finds hoseok’s hands and pins them above his head, stretching to do it so that he’s leaning over hoseok, leaning down and hoseok wants to kiss him so bad, hoseok wants this so, so much, but - 

“so why won’t you just fucking ask for it, hyung?” 

and it’s only because taehyung has him like this, it’s only because he’s so, so close to finally getting what he wants that he can be honest like he needs to be instead of just honest the way he usually is. 

“because. just because i want you to touch me doesn’t mean that you want that too,” he admits and he doesn’t want to look at taehyung when he says it but he does because he can’t look away. taehyung stares down at him. and then stares down at him. and then stares down at him some more. he doesn’t move, doesn’t budge. 

“all this time, that was what it was? you -” his eyes are wide with disbelief, “you didn’t think i wanted you too?” 

and oh that sounds promising. that sounds kind of like this is going where hoseok wants it to and his sense of relief is huge except for how it’s dwarfed by how fucking hype he is to finally, finally get dicked down by taehyung. 

“i didn’t know for sure. and if you didn’t, if you don’t, that’s fine, that’s -” 

“that’s fucking bullshit, hyung,” taehyung says and then he’s dipping his head to kiss hoseok and it’s probably embarrassing how hoseok just opens right up for him but it also makes taehyung moan when he can slip his tongue up over hoseok’s bottom lip, into his mouth to softly brush against hoseok’s. “i love you, hobi-hyung. you’re one of my best friends and you’re stupidly, stupidly hot. i’ve wanted to fuck your perfect little ass every day for years now, hyung.” 

hoseok closes his eyes and breathes in hard through his nose, clenches his fingers tight around nothing at all because god, this is going to be good. this is going to be so fucking good and hoseok gets to have it, now. 

“so come on. do it. do it, tae,” he says, opening his eyes again just in time to catch taehyung’s smirk. 

taehyung’s not holding hoseok’s hands down anymore but hoseok keeps them exactly where they are, just arches his back when taehyung’s hands go to his waist, get under his shirt and start to push it up. he laughs when he has to pull it off because hoseok isn’t moving to help. 

“oh you wanna be good for me, hyung? is that it?” taehyung asks and hoseok doesn’t know, hoseok doesn’t know what he wants apart from everything. it’s already so much and he’s in over his head and it’s good, he’s way out of his depth and he’s choking, he’s drowning, but he fucking loves it. 

“i want whatever. i want it all. i just want you,” hoseok stammers and taehyung throws his shirt off to one side, pulls his own up and off and tosses that after it too. when he leans back down their chests press together, so much skin, so warm and close and good and when taehyung smiles at him this time, it’s nothing but sweet. 

“see? that’s not so hard to say, is it hyung?” taehyung kisses him gently, tilts hoseok’s face the way he wants it with his hand on his neck, his thumb up under hoseok’s chin and being manhandled by taehyung, getting pushed and pulled however taehyung wants him - because taehyung _wants him_ \- is heady as fuck. taehyung sucks softly at hoseok’s tongue and hoseok whimpers. 

he puts his hands to taehyung’s shoulders and pushes him over onto his back, swings a leg over his hips so he’s sitting astride him and then he just looks down at him, on his back underneath hoseok. shirtless on his own bed and reaching up for hoseok. 

hoseok sways forward, folds quick and easy and pure instinct until they’re pressed together again and he can lift taehyung’s hips up off the bed to get his hands underneath him, get a hold of taehyung’s ass and pull them up as he grinds down. they’re both hard, taehyung in his sweats and hoseok in his jeans and the pressure is so good, better somehow for how taehyung’s sweats are soft and worn and he hadn’t pulled on any underwear but hoseok’s jeans are tight tight tight, his dick held in place when he grinds down against taehyung and feels his cock move against him. 

“hyung,” taehyung says, nosing at the side of hoseok’s face to get his attention because hoseok is too distracted looking down between them, spaces the fuck out thinking about how good taehyung looks between his legs, how good he feels there. “hyung we gotta. we should shower, if i’m gonna fuck you we should -” 

hoseok laughs, absolutely delighted by the timing of this turn of events. 

“nah, we’re good,” he says and taehyung frowns up at him, “i took a shower after practice. finger fucked myself thinking about sucking your dick when yoongi hyung was in the next stall griping about jimin stealing a pair of his socks.” 

“damn hyung,” taehyung says, looking a little dazed and a lot hungry, “go off, i guess.” 

“so can i?” hoseok asks because now that he’s reminded himself of it, he can’t think about anything else. 

“can you what? i mean - yeah, but what?” taehyung’s hands are at his thighs, sliding slowly up his legs. he tugs at the belt loops on hoseok’s jeans, a petulant little frown on his face like just the sight of them offends him. 

“can i suck you off?” hoseok says easily, because it’s easy now, it’s easier with every passing minute, to be honest about this at last. 

taehyung, still frowning, lifts his eyes to hoseok’s. 

“what’s a stronger word for ‘yes’ than ‘yes’?” he asks and then he’s going for the zipper on hoseok’s jeans, pulling the button open so hard the sound rings out loud around them and it takes some wriggling, some creative problem solving on both their parts but eventually hoseok’s jeans come off, his socks and boxers tossed after them. 

“for someone so smart, you’re a dumbass, hyung,” taehyung says, slapping his ass hard. “i’ve been trying to fuck you for forever. did you think i was kidding?” 

taehyung is flirtatious and complimentary, but not nearly as much as some of the rest of them are, so it had been pretty easy for hoseok to overlook it, to dismiss it at as something else. 

“i thought you were just being friendly?” hoseok says and taehyung laughs at him, shaking his head. he’s still got his hair tied back and it’s absurd how that makes him somehow even hotter. it’s his forehead, maybe. nah, it’s definitely his eyebrows. god those are good eyebrows. 

“oh sure,” taehyung agrees easily, “what’s a little insufferable and extended sexual tension between a couple of good friends? hey speaking of friendship, i’m really hype about finally getting to introduce my dick to your mouth, so if you’re down, can we -” 

before he’s even finished the sentence, hoseok is on his knees between taehyung’s legs, yanking his sweatpants down to mid thigh. 

and the thing is, taehyung’s dick is big. and hoseok knew that. everyone knows that. people can take one look at him and tell. it’s loud and clear in how he carries himself. it’s like a fucking siren goes off in hoseok’s head every time he gets to see taehyung naked. but even that is nothing compared to this. 

“you’ve got such a great dick,” hoseok says, wrapping a hand loosely around taehyung’s shaft, carefully smoothing his foreskin back so he can get his tongue up under the head. the slit is beaded with pre-come already and hoseok makes a quick and easy decision. “i wanna feel you come in my mouth. i’ll get you hard again, i still want to get fucked but i want this too,” he says and taehyung pushes hoseok’s hair back out of his eyes and swears at him. 

“maybe you should go back to not being able to ask me for what you want, hyung,” taehyung says, his eyes slipping shut when hoseok looks up at him and starts to drop his mouth down low around taehyung’s cock. “maybe you should just do whatever you want, always,” he adds, words strained because hoseok’s got the head of his dick pressed to the back of his throat now and he’s not stopping, just shuffling up on his knees so he can get the angle right so taehyung’s cockhead sinks past his gag reflex. he chokes a little bit, but that’s okay. taehyung’s cock jerks in his mouth and hoseok moans at that. 

“your mouth feels so good, hyung,” taehyung groans, one arm thrown up over his face so he can bite into the skin of his own forearm. “you look so fucking good between my legs, hobi-hyung.” 

‘thank you,’ hoseok wants to say, ‘i can’t believe i’m finally here, i’ve been trying to get here forever, will you let me stay?’ he wants to say, too, but his mouth is full and that’s better, that’s fucking perfect. 

he drops his hand to taehyung’s balls, cups them hard and then rolls them in his fingers, the spit that’s dribbling out of his mouth making them wet, making taehyung shiver under him. 

hoseok pulls up, pulls all the way off and sucks at the head, gets careless with his teeth for a second and makes taehyung whine. 

“you gotta fuck my mouth, tae,” hoseok says, dragging his drool up and down taehyung’s shaft, spreading it out and leaning in to tongue at the vein on the underside, rubbing the head against his lips because it’s hot and soft and it’s taehyung and hoseok _wants_. “will you fuck my mouth? please?” 

taehyung sits up sharply, pushing hoseok’s hands away, pushing him back off him. his cock smacks wetly against his stomach and hoseok bites his lip, looks at taehyung and waits and wants. 

“up,” taehyung says, tapping at hoseok’s thigh and then slapping his ass until he moves, “get on your hands and knees over me, this way,” taehyung says, manhandling hoseok, pulling him where he wants him. hoseok just goes, just does whatever taehyung’s hands encourage him to do, at his elbows, on his thighs, in his hair, tugging and pulling and arranging him how he wants him. taehyung’s sweats get kicked off somewhere in there so they’re both naked now, taehyung still on his back in the middle of the bed and hoseok up over him but top to tail so all he can see is taehyung’s cock, bobbing in front of his face and taehyung’s long, gorgeous legs stretched out and trembling, heels kicking restlessly against the sheets. 

“fuck, look at your fucking ass,” taehyung says, low and appreciative from behind him, from under him and hoseok is glad he can’t see his face. he spreads hoseok’s cheeks and hoseok hears a sharp inhale. “you’re still wet, hyung, you missed a little lube.” 

“didn’t miss it,” hoseok corrects him, spitting on the tip of taehyung’s cock and watching it roll down his shaft, getting his hands around him and spreading it out. “left it there for later. i was gonna see if namjoon wanted to fuck around when we got back.” 

taehyung slaps his ass again, hard enough that he really, really feels this one. 

“you were gonna let joon fuck your ass before i did, hyung? that’s not very nice. i don’t think that’s how friends are supposed to treat each other.” 

hoseok laughs and wiggles his ass in taehyung’s face. 

“namjoon is my friend too, taehyung,” he reminds him and then he has to remind himself how to breathe because taehyung is holding him open and pressing two fingertips into him, testing at his rim. 

“yeah, he’s mine too,” taehyung says, biting gently at hoseok’s ass cheek, his fingers still pushing into him but so fucking slowly, shallow like taehyung is just playing with him. “and i like him a lot, love him even, but that doesn’t mean i’m gonna let him have your ass before i do.” 

“how about after?” hoseok asks, just to push it, just to be a little shit for a quick sec because riled up taehyung is fun. riled up taehyung is hot as fuck. “are you cool with him fucking me after?” 

“after what? after i fuck you or after i fuck him?” taehyung says, because he’s always got to one up hoseok. he’s always got to exceed all of their expectations of him. hoseok feels his nose between his legs, clenches down on the fingers taehyung still has in him when he dips in close to suck one of hoseok’s balls into his mouth. he lets it fall back out with a wet little pop and hoseok sucks hard and wet at the head of his cock in retaliation. “you can do whatever you want, once i’ve had you both. wanna fuck you both first. i think i wanna fuck every single of you,” taehyung says, considering and hoseok can’t deal with that idea, with that imagery. 

“shut the fuck up and fuck my mouth already, you promised,” he says instead because nothing clears his head as effectively as getting his mouth stuffed full of cock and there’s too much to think about, too much to fucking plan and if hoseok lets his mind go down that path he’s never coming back from it and he’s pretty invested in coming on taehyung’s cock before that happens.

“i did, huh hyung?” taehyung asks and the fingers in hoseok’s ass disappear and the hand holding him open falls away and he’s sad about that for a second but then one of taehyung’s hands is on his hip holding him steady and the other is in hoseok’s hair, pushing him down. 

it’s blissful, sinking back down onto taehyung’s cock. he’s so hard now that he’s throbbing in hoseok’s mouth and he shouts when hoseok gets him in his throat and swallows hard around him. 

“fuck. fuck!” taehyung slings his arm up across hoseok’s lower back and it feels good, it feels grounding. his hand is still in hoseok’s hair and that feels good too, feels even better when he grabs a handful and uses it to pull hoseok up off his cock and then shove him back down. “i don’t know how your ass is gonna measure up against this but - fuck! shit, i can’t - can’t wait to see how it does,” taehyung says and hoseok would smile at that, if he could. 

he’s had one hand holding him up, the other on taehyung’s thigh, but he has to put both of them on either side of taehyung’s hips when taehyung gets his feet under him and starts properly fucking hoseok’s mouth, his hips coming up off the bed to bury his cock in hoseok’s throat over and over again. 

“gonna - gonna come,” he says, panting with the effort he’s putting in now and hoseok would nod, would say ‘god yes please’, would do something to indicate that he’s absolutely on board with that but all he can actually do is wrap one arm around taehyung’s thigh and hold on tight, moan around taehyung’s cock and hope he’s a fucking mindreader. 

he must be, because he swears again and comes like that, his cock pulsing in hoseok’s mouth. hoseok swallows and swallows and then swallows again until taehyung drops his hips back down to the mattress and loosens the hold he has on hoseok’s hair, runs his fingers through it gently instead. 

“i fucking hate you, hyung. we could have been doing this for years. we should be doing this always,” taehyung says and when hoseok rolls onto his back next to him, taehyung has his arm flung up over his eyes and is breathing so hard his chest is heaving with it. 

“i dunno,” hoseok says, flicking his sweaty hair out of his face and giggling, still a little breathless, still so fucking hard he has to drop a hand between his legs and squeeze himself, just this side of too tight, too much, “seems like that took it out of you. can you even go again?” he doesn’t know himself if he’s just trying to rile taehyung up again or if he’s actually got to be worried about this. it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he had to jerk off right now, he could come in five seconds flat after that, but he really, really wants to get fucked. he’s not above begging. 

“yes,” taehyung says, sitting up and reaching over into the drawer of his bedside table. “i can, so c’mon. let me see that perfect little ass again, hyung.” 

he’s still breathing hard when hoseok gets up on his knees over him, but it doesn’t stop him from leaning in and kissing the taste of his own come out of hoseok’s mouth, so hoseok isn’t complaining. 

“who do you think i should fuck next, hyung?” taehyung asks when he’s got three of his long, lovely fingers stretching hoseok’s hole open for his cock. 

hoseok rests his forehead against taehyung’s and they both look down to watch when taehyung wraps a loose fist around hoseok’s cock and strokes him, slow and easy. 

“whichever of them you want,” hoseok says, sucking his bottom lip up into his mouth so he doesn’t start drooling or something instead. “they all wanna fuck you. well, i’m pretty sure. namjoon does. yoongi does.” 

taehyung laughs and spreads his fingers inside hoseok. he’s staying away from hoseok’s prostate but it still feels good, still hurts a little bit in a way that hoseok really likes. 

“they said that? wow. i thought you were all a couple years off admitting it, still. sometimes i thought i might have to wait until after this whole thing. figured i could use it as a way to get us all back together, just in a different way.” he waggles his eyebrows and it shouldn’t be hot, but he’s taehyung, so it absolutely is. “but then you and namjoon. that was a surprise. i wondered so many times which of you would cave first. how it would go down. never imagined that.” 

“hey, wait, stop for a sec,” hoseok puts one hand on taehyung’s shoulder and with the other, tugs at his wrist until taehyung wipes his hand off on the covers and lets hoseok sit down in his lap, wraps his arms loosely around his waist. 

“what’s the matter?” taehyung asks, looking concerned. “did i - do you not -” 

“nah, no. it’s not that. i just,” hoseok feels kind of stupid but knows he shouldn’t. he’s being honest now and it’s working out really well for him so far, so he keeps it pushing. “you knew this entire time? that all of us wanted you? why didn’t you do something about it?” 

taehyung shrugs, lets his hands trail up and down hoseok’s back while he seems to consider his answer. 

“i knew you all looked at me like you were constantly trying not to jump me,” he says easily because only he could say something like that without pause, plain matter of fact, “but none of you ever did anything about it either. i thought maybe you’d decided it would be bad for the group or wasn’t the right time or whatever.” 

“you thought we had a group meeting minus you where we decided that we were too busy to fuck you yet?” hoseok is trying to be serious, he really and truly is, but he’s sitting in taehyung’s lap and they’re naked so he has to treat this situation with the reverence it deserves and that means cupping taehyung’s pecs in his hands and tonguing at his nipples in turn. 

“ohhh fuck, i -” taehyung shifts in place, his cock starting to swell again against hoseok’s ass, “i dunno. i didn’t know if i was crazy for thinking this would work. all of us. i still don’t know if it’s gonna be - what i think it could be. but i’m so fucking sick of waiting. if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t, but i’m not holding back anymore.” 

if what taehyung has been doing for the last few years has been him ‘holding back’, hoseok is honestly scared for them all, but this is exciting as fuck too. hoseok doesn’t think taehyung is crazy for wanting this, for thinking it could work. he’s pretty sure they’ve all been slowly working their way towards being on the same page for a long time, now. and now feels right. 

“i think it’s gonna happen,” hoseok says, whispers between them like it’s something precious, something to protect, “i think we’re gonna do this.” 

“i really, really fucking hope so,” taehyung says, “because i’m kind of obsessed with the idea of it. if i don’t get to have every single one of you i’m gonna be fucking miserable.” 

“well, i can’t speak for everyone,” hoseok says, grinding a little in taehyung’s lap, getting his dick between his cheeks and rocking on it, feeling it get wet with the lube that’s dripping out of him and getting harder every time hoseok grinds down on it, “but i know for sure that you’re gonna get to have me. like. right now, if you want.” 

“oh i want, hyung. want hyung,” taehyung says and he leans up to kiss hoseok until he’s squirming in taehyung’s lap, trying to reach behind himself to line taehyung’s cock up right without moving away from taehyung’s mouth. 

“shut up, c’mon. in me, you little fucker. i want you in me,” hoseok says pissily when taehyung laughs against his lips. 

“well you could try asking nicely, hyung,” taehyung says, reaching around hoseok to take his cock in his hand but holding it away from hoseok’s ass instead of pushing in like hoseok wants. 

“easy for you to say when you came once already,” hoseok grumbles, but he’s not mad, not really. 

“please fuck me, taehyung,” he says, dragging the words out and then holding his ass cheeks open, sitting back so all that’s between him and taehyung’s cock is taehyung’s thumb on it, the tip of it dipping into hoseok’s hole when he pushes back against it. “please? want it so bad. want you, taehyung-ah, please,” he says and leans in to kiss taehyung, all tongue and teeth. 

“yeah, yeah, okay,” taehyung says, sounding dazed, blinking his eyes open slowly when hoseok pulls away. 

“i’m gonna fuck you so well, hyung,” taehyung promises, “wanna get on your back for me? wanna ride me? how do you want it, hyung?” 

and hoseok has thought about it a lot, over the years. he wants it a lot of ways, from taehyung. but there’s one he just can’t help coming back to. 

“i want you to hold me down, push me face first into your sheets and fucking wreck me, tae.” honesty really is the best policy, hoseok has found, because telling taehyung exactly what he wants from him gets taehyung scrambling to give it to him. 

“up, hyung,” taehyung orders when he’s got hoseok on his belly. when hoseok lifts his hips, taehyung tucks a pillow under him, lifts his hips up onto it and holds him there, runs his hands up and down hoseok’s sides. “you good? you ready?” 

“yeah, please. fuck me, taehyung,” hoseok says, reaching back to hold himself open for taehyung and taehyung all but falls over onto him, catches himself with one hand holding him up but his head dropped low to bury his nose in the hair at the back of hoseok’s neck as he pushes his cock in, sinks into hoseok’s hole inch by inch, so fucking slow that hoseok would scream if he wasn’t biting into the pillow under his face instead because it feels so fucking good, he feels so fucking _full_ and it’s taehyung that’s filling him up, taehyung that’s warm along his back and kissing breathlessly across the line of hoseok’s trembling shoulders. 

“oh,” he says when taehyung is all the way there, when he stills and opens his mouth against hoseok’s shoulder blade, kisses him with teeth. “you feel so good. so big in me. so good, taehyung.” 

“i love you, hyung,” taehyung says, “love that i get to have this, with you. thank you for trusting me. thank you, hyung,” taehyung says and hoseok, to his disbelief, feels his eyes get wet. 

“i love you too,” he says, swears it because it’s huge, it’s so important and when he gets one elbow under himself and twists back, taehyung’s mouth is right there to meet his. 

“love you,” taehyung says again, with his bottom lip pressed between hoseok’s and then they’re kissing hard, deep in a hundred different ways because whatever this is they’re doing, it’s been years coming and it sinks right down into the very center of hoseok, makes itself a home in him. 

taehyung drops his forehead to hoseok’s shoulder and pulls back, pulls out a little and then pushes back in. he starts up a slow, steady set of thrusts and hoseok moves back into it, moves with him, meets him in the middle every time. 

they don’t say anything else after that, because they don’t need to. 

when the noises that taehyung is wringing out of hoseok get loud, go high pitched and don’t stop, taehyung pulls him up so he’s holding himself up under taehyung on his hands. and then taehyung wraps one arm high and tight around hoseok’s chest and hugs him close, holds him back against his chest. he jerks hoseok off hard and fast, but he kisses him slow, so slow and sweet. 

hoseok comes so hard he really does start to cry and it makes sense, because it feels like something has broken open inside of him, like the relief of finally getting to have this loosens something from him. 

“just the beginning, hyung,” taehyung says, low and choked up in hoseok’s ear and then he’s coming too and hoseok loses his breath all over again. 

they both lay side by side on their backs, after. taehyung reaches for hoseok’s hand and brings it up to his mouth, kisses the back of it and then holds it to his chest, his heart pounding beneath it. 

“this is gonna be something special,” hoseok decides and he means this; he means what they just did because he’s going to remember it forever. 

but he means what’s coming next, too. he means that maybe more. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the song 'no more' by prettymuch which is a good, good bop.


	3. taehyung/jungkook - on foot but i'll never make it home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> taehyung doesn’t say anything. he breathes hard through his nose and looks at jungkook, stares at him like he’s waiting for the expression on jungkook’s face to crack, like he’s waiting for jungkook to peel a mask off, like he’s waiting for something to happen that isn’t going to happen, because jungkook won’t take this back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -okay this chapter is almost a whole day late and i'm very sorry about that! it's not as if these chapters are short and the more i get into it the more it becomes a case of not only establishing a new ship every chapter but layering in the ot7 end game of it at all too, so i'm gonna stretch the posting out to a new chapter every three days. 
> 
> -warning for mention/brief description of a panic attack in this chapter. it's not the focus of the scene but it happens and it's not just a throwaway reference so if that's going to be difficult for you please be careful. message me if you'd like any more information. 
> 
> -this chapter is an angsty one. sad times but if you're at all familiar with my work or follow me on twitter (@hwifighting / @mockturtletale) you will know that i am existentially opposed to unhappy endings, so it all works out. there's just a metric fuckton of miscommunication to get through first. for the lols. if by lols you mean many many tears. sorrrrrrrrry. 
> 
> i think that's all the notes for this one? have fun, be safe, leave a comment if you liked/cried. :D

taehyung had been jungkook’s first kiss. 

jungkook’s kissed plenty of other people since and he hasn’t kissed taehyung again. 

he hasn’t kissed anyone else in the group, but he’s thought about it. he thinks he’s probably thought about it too often. he’s certain he wants it too badly, wants it far too much. he pushes himself to date other people, to kiss other people, to fuck other people. it’s not that he doesn’t want to. it’s just that he doesn’t want it as much as he wants to fuck his friends. he’s never wanted anything as much as he wants that. but that’s not a thing that happens. that’s not something he can just have, so jungkook pushes himself to do something else, to do whatever it takes to keep himself sane, to make himself feel like he’s at least trying to do what’s expected of him, trying to make his options work, living his life the way he’s supposed to. 

and then one day he wakes up from a nap and he’s thirsty and he must have had a lot of dreams because his head is still muggy with them, it feels like he’s swimming in something he can’t see as he heads toward the kitchen to get some water, maybe find some leftovers to snack on, but before he gets there he finds something he hadn’t been looking for, instead. 

hoseok is on the couch. backed up against the arm of it, mostly lying down, with namjoon on his stomach between his legs. they’re kissing and jungkook fumbles for his phone, takes one and then two and then five more quick shots of it because they look really fucking good pressed together and he can’t believe what he’s seeing and he doesn’t know why it makes him feel like he might cry. 

he goes back to his room without grabbing water, without food and his stomach is rumbling with hunger, knotted up with something else when he brushes his teeth, combs his hair and then goes to knock on yoongi’s bedroom door. 

yoongi opens up frowning, his headphones tugged off to sit around his neck and a question in his mouth when he opens it, but jungkook beats him to it. 

“hyung, can i kiss you?” jungkook asks and whatever yoongi was braced to say falls away entirely and he’s left just staring at jungkook. his eyes fall to jungkook’s mouth and jungkook is maybe panting a little bit but that’s okay because when yoongi fists a hand in the collar of his shirt and drags him into his room, yoongi is breathing so hard that jungkook feels it against his lips, tastes it when yoongi gets a hand in his hair and brings his mouth down to his own, kisses him like maybe he’s been waiting as long for this as jungkook has. 

“i’ve wanted to do this, wanted this for fucking ever,” yoongi says, with his hands up under the hem of jungkook’s tshirt but staying on his waist. yoongi is touching jungkook’s waist, both of his big hands warm and a little rough on jungkook’s bare skin and jungkook’s hungry in more than one way now. he puts his hands on yoongi, one on the side of his face, one low on his neck between the curve of his shoulder and the padded cuff of his headphones and he kisses his hyung open mouthed, feels like he’s going to shake apart there and then when yoongi goes on his tippy toes to push his tongue into jungkook’s mouth. 

it’s so, so good for a moment. it’s blisteringly hot. it’s easily the best kiss jungkook has ever had, the most right it’s ever felt and he could get lost in this feeling, he wants to dive into it headfirst and never resurface again, but then his stomach rumbles, so loud that yoongi laughs in the middle of still kissing jungkook. 

“cute. you’re so cute, ‘guk,” yoongi says and jungkook can tell from just the shape of his eyes that he’s smiling. 

“am not,” jungkook protests, rubbing a hand over his stomach to try and silence it somehow and then reaching for yoongi’s hips, pulling him in against him. “i’m hot, hyung,” he says, kissing yoongi hard on the mouth just once and then nosing under his chin, tipping yoongi’s head back so he can press his mouth to yoongi’s throat, suck softly at the rise of his adam’s apple. 

his fucking stomach rumbles. again. 

yoongi’s laughter is breathless, this time. 

“you’re hot as fuck,” yoongi agrees, “but you’re also starving, huh? let’s go find you something to eat.” 

he takes his headphones off and tosses them onto his bed and then he takes jungkook by the hand and leads him to the kitchen. when they pass through the living room, namjoon and hoseok are sitting side by side, namjoon working and hoseok watching tv. jungkook had forgotten about them. he’d forgotten that they were why he’d gone to yoongi’s room in the first place. 

his stomach gets tight again when he thinks about what he’d seen, when he remembers what they’d looked like, together. but it’s not a bad feeling, anymore. it’s different, now, somehow. 

jungkook and yoongi share a heaving saucepan full of spicy ramen and jungkook catches yoongi watching him slurp up noodles and lick the broth off his lips, laughs delightedly at the slack jawed look on his face. 

“ah, you’re staring, hyung,” jungkook tells him, not deterring him in the slightest. “you want me so bad, hyung,” jungkook says and he’s playing, he’s just kidding, but yoongi nods at him, agrees with him and leans in and wipes at something on jungkook’s cheek, licks his thumb clean after. 

“i do, ‘guk,” he says, finally eating now but still looking at jungkook, watching him no differently from how he usually does. “hyung wants you,” he says and it doesn’t change anything, but it’s still kind of mind-blowing to hear, still feels like maybe things are different now in a way that jungkook can’t see, can’t point out, can’t quite put his finger on yet. 

“well, same,” jungkook says and yoongi smiles at him, wide and easy. 

they eat together and then they go back to yoongi’s room, jungkook trailing after him for want of anywhere else to be, because he wants, he finds, to be wherever yoongi is, just for a little while longer. 

yoongi shows him what he’d been working on before jungkook had interrupted him and they talk about it, jungkook sharing some ideas that yoongi says he thinks will help him. 

they fall into easy, familiar silence after that and jungkook lies on yoongi’s bed and fucks around on his phone while yoongi sits at his desk to work. 

when jungkook gets up to go and do something else, ready to be somewhere else now, he takes a detour to stop by yoongi’s desk and drop a kiss onto the top of his head, first. yoongi turns and leans up, leans in to catch jungkook’s mouth and that, of all things, makes jungkook’s breath catch in his throat. 

“see you later, jungkook-ah,” yoongi says, turning back to face his computer again, but jungkook sees him smile in his reflection in the monitor. 

he barely makes it back to his own room without skipping. 

today was a big day. today has been just great, if you ask jungkook. 

he looks at the pictures he took of hoseok and namjoon kissing again. 

he thinks about it and doubts himself and then thinks about it and doubts himself some more but decides to try and ride out his luck. he sends the pictures to taehyung. no accompanying message. no explanation. it’s pretty obvious what he’s saying. taehyung will know what he means. 

taehyung has to know what jungkook is asking for. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 

the next day is a wednesday and it is a no good, very bad day indeed. 

it starts out well enough, because jungkook gets to wake up as someone who kissed his hyung yesterday. 

has kissed two of his hyungs now, he mentally tallies and that feels like a pretty great starting point for any day, really. 

they all have breakfast together, for once find the time to sit down to eat what yoongi spontaneously decides he wants to cook for them and that’s pretty great, too. 

they’re running through choreography changes and staging for the upcoming tour today and that’s always a fun time so jungkook’s good mood endures. 

but then they take a break and jungkook grabs some water, grabs a bite to eat, pauses briefly to bite seokjin in the ball of his shoulder and then he bounds up some stairs, heading for the roof. 

he’d only meant to get some air, breathe in the cold breeze that didn’t get anywhere near their practice room but lately it seems like all jungkook is finding is things he’s not looking for and in this case, something he really does not want. 

taehyung has hoseok pressed up against the wall in a deserted stairwell and jungkook wouldn’t even have noticed them if it wasn’t for hoseok’s rainbow sweater, a splash of too many too bright colours in an otherwise grey washed scene. 

one of hoseok’s legs is up around taehyung’s waist, held there by taehyung’s hand that even as jungkook is watching is sliding up and up and up until he’s grabbing at hoseok’s ass, pulling him in harder, trying to get him closer. 

jungkook can’t see taehyung’s face, because it’s at hoseok’s throat, but hoseok’s face is tipped up, his chin high and his mouth open wide, his tongue licking at his own bottom lip like he can’t keep it in his mouth. one of his hands is down the back of taehyung’s jeans and the other is fisted in his hair and jungkook wishes he’d brought his phone with him so he could smash it against a wall, so he could throw it at the two of them, maybe. 

he takes off up the stairs again and he doesn’t try to be quiet, doesn’t give a shit who hears when he shoves the door to the roof open and it bangs hard against the wall. 

he’s up there for so long that seokjin has to come find him and bring him back and he apologizes when he returns but he can’t look at taehyung, can’t look at hoseok, can’t look at any of them, he finds and doesn’t know why. 

the rest of the practice session goes fine. nothing of note happens. 

they finish up a little earlier than they’d thought they would, even. 

jungkook is glad. jungkook picks up his jacket and bolts. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

taehyung had been jungkook’s first kiss. 

he hadn’t been the first person jungkook wanted to kiss, but he’d been the first one who’d kissed him back, the first person to try and kiss jungkook ever and jungkook hasn’t stopped wanting to kiss him since. 

they don’t talk about it. 

they don’t kiss again. 

but that’s not the end of it. 

a couple months after they’d kissed, when jungkook was a sliver older and no more experienced, he’d snuck into taehyung’s bed, snuck under the covers with him and they hadn’t talked about it, but they’d touched each other. jungkook had come for the first time with another person with taehyung, with taehyung’s hand in his shorts and taehyung’s tshirt balled up between his teeth so he wouldn’t make too much noise. taehyung had had to wrap his own hand around jungkook’s on his cock and it had felt like like he was just using jungkook’s hand, using him the way he would a toy and that had only made it even hotter, to jungkook. afterward, taehyung had cleaned them both up with wet wipes and brushed jungkook’s hair out of his face and pressed his mouth to his cheekbone and told him to sleep well. and jungkook had. 

a couple more couple months after that, jungkook was older still and found himself wanting taehyung no less, so he’d dragged him into the changing rooms when he knew they were the only ones still in the building after a late practice and taehyung had let him push him down onto a stack of workout mats and get on his knees between taehyung’s legs and learn how to make taehyung come apart with his mouth. that wasn’t the only place on taehyung that jungkook had wanted to put his mouth, not nearly, but that had felt like the right order of things. a little bit more, a little bit closer to too much every time but never like the first. never quiet. never sweet. just knuckles pressed between teeth to keep themselves quiet. bruises bitten into places no one else would ever see because no one else could ever see. no one could know and that was okay as long as taehyung never pushed jungkook away. and he didn’t. he never had. 

they’ve touched each other everywhere, by now. 

it’s different, now, has changed slowly but undeniably over time. over the years, because it has been years. 

some things are exactly the same, though. 

they’ve only ever kissed once and they’ve never talked about it at all. 

jungkook thinks about waking up in taehyung’s bed sometimes, lately. he doesn’t stay, afterwards. jungkook doesn’t ask and taehyung doesn’t offer. 

they haven’t fucked yet, not properly. jungkook feels like that’s something he’d have to ask for and he isn’t ready to, not yet. he’d go along with it, if taehyung started it. he wants it. he wants it so bad. but saying it is something different. saying it terrifies him. 

he can’t. so he doesn’t. and they haven’t. 

sometimes he wakes up early so he can wake taehyung up with his cock already in his throat. 

sometimes taehyung holds him down over his bathroom counter and makes him come, crying around his tongue. 

a few months ago, taehyung fingered jungkook idly on the couch in the living room while the both of them had a conversation with hoseok. 

and that had felt nothing but normal. natural, even, because that was how this went - it always ramped up, was always more and more and more in ways that felt like too much even though it wasn’t ever enough for jungkook. 

it was good, but it wasn’t exactly right. and jungkook took it because he wanted it, took it as it was because he didn’t know how to make it different, make it better. 

he loves taehyung. he’s _in_ love with taehyung, he always has been. 

but he’s always been in love with all of them and it’s not like this with the rest of them and that’s good and it’s bad too and jungkook doesn’t know how to make that different either. 

he feels like he’s starting out on the right foot with yoongi. 

kissing yoongi feels like the most right jungkook has ever gotten anything. 

it feels like an unlock code, like a fix he can apply in other places, with other people. 

with taehyung. 

and he’s going to. he wants to. he’s so fucking excited to; he can’t wait to kiss taehyung again because it’s been years and he dreams about it, he wants it and he thinks maybe he can have it after all. 

but then he finds hoseok and taehyung wrapped around each other and all of jungkook’s plans fall apart in his hands. all the good things he’d gathered up and kept to bring to taehyung just fall away, useless now. unwanted. 

only it’s jungkook that’s unwanted. it’s jungkook that taehyung doesn’t want. 

before jungkook had ran up the stairs, ran to the roof, ran as far away as he could get, then, hoseok had tugged hard at taehyung’s hair, pulled until taehyung came away from his neck with a wet, audible sound. and then he’d pulled again, his hand still in taehyung’s hair and taehyung had come so willingly, so easy for it when hoseok tugged him in close to kiss him. 

after practice, jungkook runs again. 

the second he can, he goes as far away as he can get. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

it’s easy enough to traverse the streets of seoul unscathed. once he goes late enough, where it’s either busy enough or not busy at all, a mask and a hat or a hood get the job done. 

it’s winter and it’s so cold out that jungkook’s cheeks feel like they’re burning with it and his hands are frozen, even shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. 

the first snow is coming, will happen soon and that only makes jungkook sadder. 

another milestone, another year. 

it had been winter when he and taehyung had kissed for the first time. 

it’s winter again now and jungkook is realizing that maybe that will always be the only time. 

his phone vibrates in his pocket and he ignores it, he keeps walking. 

he feels the short buzz of texts, the extended hum of phone calls and he lets them all go unanswered. 

he walks like if he just keeps going, he might eventually find himself further and further away from his problems, like walking might actually get him anywhere at all. 

it won’t and it doesn’t and in the end he’s got no choice, he has to turn back. 

by the time he makes it home, he can’t feel his face and he fumbles with his shoes, takes forever to get his laces undone with fingers too frozen to cooperate. 

he’s planning on doing some laundry (because sorting and folding clean, fresh smelling clothes always soothes him) and checking his phone, reassuring seokjin and whichever of the other hyungs were looking for him that he’s fine. yoongi, maybe. namjoon, probably. he’s waiting for the feeling in his hands to come back so he can unlock his phone as he walks towards his bedroom but what ends up happening is that he drops his phone when he pushes the door to his room open and finds taehyung sitting on his bed. 

“we should talk,” taehyung says, sitting up straighter and jungkook can’t, jungkook doesn’t know how to, jungkook wants to run, jungkook is going to bolt, jungkook has to - 

“please, jungkook. please,” taehyung says and jungkook closes his eyes for a second, takes a deep breath and then scoops his phone up and closes his bedroom door behind him, closes them in, together. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 

jungkook can’t talk about it because he knows that conversation goes one of two ways, in this situation. 

if he tells taehyung that he loves him, that he’s in love with him, that he wants to kiss him again, kiss him forever maybe, taehyung could say ‘yes.’ and then they’d be together. and it would be wonderful, jungkook thinks, to get to kiss taehyung whenever he wanted. 

but he knows it wouldn’t stop him from wanting to kiss jimin. wanting to kiss seokjin. wanting to kiss hoseok and yoongi. feeling like he might die, if doesn’t get to kiss namjoon soon. 

that would be one possibility. the start of him and taehyung on a different path, a better one than the one they found themselves on, but one that jungkook doesn’t want. not if it cuts them off from the rest of the group. not if it leaves them together and alone in that. 

so maybe jungkook is supposed to tell taehyung that he wants to kiss the other hyungs. that he wants every single one of them, wants them all the very same way he wants taehyung - always and forever. 

and that would be that. that would be that because what is taehyung going to say - ‘cool, great’? that would be the end of him and taehyung and that wouldn’t get him any closer to everything else he wants because if he can’t make it work with one of them, how is he supposed to figure out how to make all six of them want him? 

it’s too much. it’s too _soon_. 

kissing yoongi had felt like the start of it, the beginning of a kind of hope that jungkook didn’t think he’d ever get to have, but he’d had it. he’d felt it, for just one day. 

and then taehyung and hoseok had happened, hot on the heels of hoseok and namjoon in more ways than one and now jungkook realizes, now he sees just how fucking stupid he’d been. 

it’s never been complicated for them; the idea of more than just two of them, the promise of more, the very real possibility of it. 

that’s probably never felt impossible to them because they’re already in it. they’re already doing it, they’re making it work. 

it’s just jungkook that’s left struggling with it, just jungkook that’s left reeling by it. 

because of course jungkook can’t understand it. it’s different for jungkook, because jungkook is on the outside of it. jungkook will only ever be on the other side of it, because they don’t want him. 

taehyung must let jungkook touch him because he knows how hard it is for all of them, how difficult it is to date, how much effort it takes to keep it under wraps. he doesn’t let jungkook kiss him because he doesn’t want him to. doesn’t want him at all, really. 

yoongi probably kissed jungkook out of sympathy. because he feels sorry for him. 

when he’d said he wanted jungkook, what he’d meant to say must have been ‘hyung wants you to feel included somehow, hyung will let you kiss him so you don’t have to feel left out,’ because they’re his best friends, they’re so much more than that and they love him and they wouldn’t want to see him hurt. 

but they can’t force themselves to want him, either and he knows that. he wouldn’t want them to. he won’t let them try. 

so he drags his desk chair over beside the bed and sits down it it, facing taehyung. 

he faces this, prepared now to lose it all. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

“that was you, right? on the stairs today?” taehyung asks and jungkook feels sick. jungkook thinks about taking pictures of hoseok and namjoon together, sending those to taehyung. he thinks about how taehyung hadn’t replied to the message. he thinks about how taehyung and hoseok had looked, pressed close to each other like it was torture to be apart. 

taehyung probably showed hoseok the message, the pictures jungkook took. they laughed about it, probably. maybe they’d think it was cute, their clueless little dongsaeng so obsessed with them, crushing on them so hard, having it so fucking bad for them. 

jungkook feels sick. 

he nods, because he can’t speak. as per fucking usual jungkook can’t get it together enough to get his idiot mouth to just fucking speak but he’s glad for that, now. after years of beating himself up about it he’s finally so fucking thankful that he couldn’t make himself acknowledge what was happening or worse still - ask for more, tell taehyung what he really wanted - because this is mortifying as is, this is making jungkook want to run away and hide forever. taehyung is right. jungkook’s stupid, useless mouth is good for nothing but sticking his dick into sometimes and jungkook should have made himself speak but only to say ‘thank you’, to thank taehyung for all the scraps he’s given him over the years because he didn’t deserve them but taehyung had given them to him anyway and fuck, taehyung must be so relieved to think that everything is out in the open and he doesn’t have to keep letting the maknae paw at him and slobber all over him anymore. maybe they’ll all pitch in, now. maybe jimin will take one for the team and let jungkook hump his perfect ass. jungkook wouldn’t even have to touch him. jungkook would come in his pants like a teenager. jimin would only have to let jungkook look at him, probably and that would be enough. jungkook is pathetic. none of them should let him have them. they shouldn’t bother with him at all. he doesn’t deserve them. they don’t want him. 

“jungkook, you gotta breathe,” taehyung is saying and it takes jungkook a second to understand why because everything is happening very fast, everything is very bright and then very very dark and oh, jungkook is on his hands and knees, jungkook is in the bathroom now, jungkook is sitting on the floor of his shower, jungkook can’t breathe. jungkook is crying. 

it’s the water that brings him back. 

his hair and his clothes are wet and that makes them heavy and the weight and the warmth, the wetness of the water brings him back. 

taehyung is sitting next to him. they’re both in jungkook’s shower and he’d always thought it was too big, pointlessly huge but maybe he’d been wrong. 

taehyung’s arm is on the floor of the shower behind jungkook, curled like he’d wanted to put it around jungkook but didn’t know if he should. his other arm is propped up on his own knees, drawn up in front of him and his head is down, his shoulders are shaking. taehyung is crying too. 

“why are you crying?” jungkook asks and his voice is breathless still, sounds rough and wrecked and jungkook doesn’t know why. 

jungkook knows why. 

it’s been years since taehyung cried like this. 

they all cry all the time and that’s fine, that’s healthy namjoon and jungkook’s therapist say, but taehyung is crying quietly and it’s just the two of them alone in here and they don’t do displays of emotion when they’re alone together. they don’t acknowledge their feelings. they don’t talk. they barely look at each other. 

taehyung lifts his head and it’s unfair, but it’s also perfectly taehyung that he’s beautiful even when he’s crying. his eyes are so dark, look utterly fucking endless and jungkook wants to brush away the tear drops that are clinging to his eyelashes, he wants to kiss taehyung until he feels better. but, jungkook remembers, that would only make jungkook feel better. it would make taehyung feel worse. 

“you just had a panic attack. _you’re_ crying. and you have the nerve to ask me why i am?” taehyung looks distraught. taehyung looks both angry and panicked. 

taehyung must think he broke jungkook. 

“you’re an idiot,” jungkook says and that, at least, makes taehyung laugh. it’s not his usual laugh. it’s not a nice sound at all. “i’m just overreacting. you know what i’m like, hyung. i’m high maintenance. i’ll be fine, you don’t have to worry about me.” 

and not that it’s not pleasant, sitting close to taehyung like this and having the warm water beat down on their backs, companionable in a cute kind of ‘everything is absolutely fucked’ way, but jungkook is starting to get stressed out thinking about how they’re going to deal with their clothes after this. 

“m’fine, hyung. let’s get out of here, our clothes are going to get destroyed,” he says and he starts to stand up but taehyung stops him with a hand on his elbow, holds on tight and won’t let go. it’s the first time he’s ever touched jungkook like that, when they’re alone like this. it’s the first time he’s ever been the one to hold onto jungkook and not the other way around and jungkook gets a sick thrill from it. even after all this, he can’t make himself not want taehyung. 

“i’m not letting you leave until you promise me that we’re going to talk about this, jungkook,” taehyung is sitting more directly under the stream of water than jungkook is, so there’s water soaking his hair, running down over his face and he’s still staring stubbornly at jungkook like he’s going to have to carry him out of here if he wants him gone. jungkook loves him. jungkook is in love with him, is the problem. and jungkook is selfish and fucked up about it still, reeling from this brutal ending of it all so he needs a moment, he needs more time. 

“let’s just toss our clothes. we’re gonna freeze if we get out in wet clothes. we should warm up first,” jungkook says, because he is a coward. because he’s not ready for it to be over, yet. 

“okay but then we’re talking,” taehyung says, looking at jungkook significantly until jungkook agrees and he does because he accepts this. he can do this. just. just not yet. just five minutes more. just one last moment of closeness before they leave him alone, please. please. 

they wring as much water as they can out of everything they strip off and that’s good. it’s good for the laundry jungkook will be doing later but it’s good for jungkook too, a distraction he can focus on so he doesn’t think about how they’ve never really been naked together. not like this, not just the two of them. there’s group nudity and that’s a weird way to put it but it’s not weird at all, not after years of sharing one bathroom and having to change into thirty different outfits in one day, no time for modesty, no room for space between them. but now they’ve all got their own rooms. now it’s been years since they last had to shower together. it’s strange to be doing this now, it’s new to be doing it with taehyung and jungkook needs as much distraction from it as he can get. 

taehyung reaches across jungkook to grab a bottle of shampoo and jungkook doesn’t look at him, keeps his eyes low. forces them lower still, then, because that’s not good, that’s not the right kind of distraction. 

they wash up together and they don’t speak and that makes jungkook feel a little bit better because that’s more like normal, that’s the way this usually goes. neither of them says a word and jungkook will remember this, he thinks. it already stands out in his memory - the breaking point. the closing bracket. this is how they are when they’re alone together and it’s nice that jungkook gets to have it one last time. it’s bittersweet and jungkook will take that. jungkook will keep this moment forever. 

when they step out of the shower they wrap towels around their waists and jungkook gathers up their wet clothes and drops them into his laundry basket. taehyung grabs a smaller towel to dry off his hair and tosses one at jungkook’s head too. 

taehyung’s hair is getting long, starting to curl at the ends and he always looks so good when his hair is wet. when he’s wet. when he’s wet and mostly naked in jungkook’s bathroom and then dropping his towel and walking naked into jungkook’s bedroom to help himself to a pair of jungkook’s boxers, a pair of his sweats. taehyung with wet hair wearing nothing but jungkook’s underwear and sweats is probably the best jungkook has ever seen him look and for a second, for one horrible beat of time jungkook thinks about making taehyung let him touch him one last time. jungkook wants it, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to make himself stop wanting it, but it makes him cringe, makes his stomach twist unpleasantly now to think about and that’s good. that will be helpful. that will make this easier. that makes this so much worse. 

jungkook layers himself in clothes. he pulls on boxers and socks and a tshirt and some soft pajama bottoms and then he pulls a huge hoodie on over all that, thinks very seriously about climbing into bed and pulling the covers up over him and letting taehyung talk to his back. 

but taehyung is going to expect jungkook to talk too. 

jungkook doesn’t know if he can do this. 

“hobi and i,” taehyung starts to say and then jungkook realizes he _can_ do this. he has to, because it’s what they want. it’s going to be so much easier for them, to cut him out entirely at last. it’s going to be so much better for them without him hanging around on the outskirts, trying to break in to what he kind of thought of as his own home. he was wrong about that. he’s not wanted here. so he’ll go. he can leave them, if that’s what will make them happy. 

taehyung is sitting on jungkook’s bed again so jungkook does do, goes to sit next to taehyung because he needs taehyung to think he’s fine with this. 

“i’m happy for you, hyung,” jungkook says and the sad part is that that’s true. he is happy for taehyung and hoseok. he’s happy for all of his hyungs to be together. he’s heartbroken that it’s without him, but he can deal. that’s his problem, not theirs. “you and hobi-hyung will be so good together. and namjoon-hyung, too. and … whoever else. you must be so happy, tae-hyung. i’m happy for you.” 

only for a moment, does jungkook let himself wonder what hoseok has that he hasn’t got. that’s a stupid thing to wonder. hoseok has lots of things that jungkook doesn’t. he’s got taehyung. he’s got namjoon. he’s got whoever he wants, probably, just like taehyung. that’s why they work so well together. they’ve even got not wanting jungkook in common. they’re made for each other. 

taehyung tries to reach for jungkook’s hand but jungkook sees it coming and moves his hand out of the way. 

“jungkook. ‘guk. hobi-hyung and i aren’t together.” 

“well, you should be,” jungkook says, sitting on both of his hands and staring down at his feet. “you will be. you’ll make it work, hyung.” 

“you’re not listening, ‘guk,” taehyung says then and jungkook doesn’t know what taehyung wants from him. he’s speaking. he is listening. he’s not crying. why isn’t this enough? why isn’t he enough? 

taehyung lifts his knee up onto the bed, turns to sit facing jungkook and reaches out for him. jungkook can’t move quick enough to get away from it and taehyung takes hold of jungkook’s face, puts his big, warm, lovely hands under jungkook’s jawline and makes jungkook look at him. 

“i know you don’t wanna talk about it. i know you don’t … you don’t like to talk about it. but what have we been doing, jungkook? what has this been, to you? i need to know. i need to hear you say it.” 

jungkook doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t want to, but taehyung’s hands on him have split him open. the way taehyung is looking at him breaks him apart. 

“i didn’t know how to ask you to let me kiss you again, hyung,” jungkook says and he is crying again, then. “i should have asked you. i wish i’d got to kiss you one last time, hyung. i know i shouldn’t. i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, but i -” 

“jungkook. baby,” taehyung says and it sounds like he’s the one with the broken heart. jungkook can’t understand why taehyung is crying, too, now. “you can kiss me whenever you want. kiss me right now. kiss me every day, jungkook, kiss me whenever you -” 

“whenever i want to?” jungkook asks, licking away the salt that’s at his lip now, his tears dripping off his cheeks down onto taehyung’s hands, still on him, still holding him. “i won’t. i won’t ever, hyung.” 

taehyung closes his eyes and lets his hands fall away from jungkook’s face. he wraps his arms around himself, tucks his hands away under his armpits and takes his eyes off jungkook. 

“i know this is hard for you, jungkook. i know you … struggle with this, but it’s getting complicated now. things are changing and you’re hurt, you’re hurting because we’re not talking about this.” 

he looks at jungkook again. 

“please try, ‘guk. please tell me what you want, because i can’t figure it out by myself. you let me touch you. you just said you wish you’d kissed me again. but you never did, jungkook. you could have, anytime you wanted, but you -” 

“how was i supposed to know that, hyung? i didn’t know i was allowed to kiss you. i never knew when it was going to be too much, when i might push you too far. all this time i was so scared that if i did something you didn’t want me to or asked you, asked for more, you might push me away for good.” jungkook isn’t crying anymore but he feels worse somehow, now that he isn’t. now there’s nothing to distract him, nothing he can use as an excuse to not speak, to pause, to think. “and now it’s over. and i only got to kiss you once. and i should have asked for more. i would have, if i’d known you would give it to me, hyung. but i’m glad i didn’t. i’m really fucking glad i didn’t.” 

taehyung makes a broken sound, at that. a fractured, sharp seeming sob. 

“you don’t have to kiss me again if that’s too much for you, ‘guk. you don’t have to do anything that makes this more difficult for you. but this doesn’t have to be over. we can take our time. we can go as slow as you need to. i won’t ever rush you, jungkook. you know i’d never -” 

“you’d never do anything to hurt me, hyung,” jungkook finishes for him. “but i won’t let you hurt yourself for me, either.” 

taehyung’s eyes go wide at that and he scoots in closer to jungkook. 

“it doesn’t hurt me to wait for you, jungkook.” 

taehyung moves into his space like he thinks proximity will change jungkook’s mind. it’s not a bad strategy. generally, the closer you are to taehyung the more likely you are to give him whatever he’s asking you for. that’s a universal law right there. but jungkook, as usual, is the outlier and it doesn’t matter how close taehyung gets to him. it doesn’t matter how far away from him taehyung is. jungkook always wants to give taehyung whatever he wants. it’s just that in this case, what he wants - what’s best for him - isn’t what taehyung is asking him for. that doesn’t matter. jungkook can’t be swayed. he won’t be. 

“you can’t wait forever, hyung,” jungkook tells him. “you can’t and i don’t want you to. you can be happy now, with hobi. with the rest of the hyungs. you can be happy now. you don’t have to wait anymore. i know, now.” jungkook’s voice cracks, but he keeps going. he forces himself to keep going. “and it hurts. of course it hurts, hyung. but i’ll get over it. i’ll be happy once you’re happy.” 

“jungkook,” taehyung says, his whole face scrunched up in confusion, “what the fuck are you talking about?” 

jungkook frowns at him. 

“don’t try and fight me on this, hyung,” jungkook insists. “i know you love me. i know you all love me. but you can’t keep letting me touch you when you don’t want me to. i know you worry about me and you want me to be safe, want me to be with someone that cares about me and i love you for that. you all take care of me so well, hyung. but you’re with people _you_ want, now. i’m not getting in the way of that. i won’t let you let me.” 

taehyung can fight him on this, honestly. jungkook would do anything for taehyung. he’ll do anything he wants. he always has. he always, always will. but he won’t be what hurts him. he won’t let himself hurt them. 

this time when taehyung reaches for him, jungkook really tries to get away. taehyung keeps reaching, though, won’t be deterred until jungkook gives up and lets his hands fall uselessly into his lap, slumps where he’s sitting and lets taehyung take his face in his hands again. this time, taehyung smooths the pads of his thumbs across jungkook’s cheekbones. he’s looking at jungkook as if in wonder. 

“you think i - you think me and … all the other hyungs. you think we’re together?” taehyung half says, half asks. 

jungkook just shrugs, because maybe it’s not like that. maybe taehyung hasn’t had the time to collect all of them, yet, but he’ll get there. it won’t take long. he’s taehyung. he looks like this. jungkook got a tiny little taste of what it’s like to be loved by him and he knows that no one who has so much as an inkling of what that feels like would turn it down. all of the hyungs know taehyung. they know who he is, how he is. none of them could want anyone else, not the way they want taehyung. not the way jungkook wants him, even now that he can’t have him, not even in bits and pieces, not even sometimes, not ever. 

“jungkook,” taehyung says, “i’ve been waiting for you. this whole time i thought -” he doesn’t seem to know how to say what he’s trying to say. he’s the one struggling to speak, for once. “i thought it was difficult for you to accept that you wanted to be with me. i thought that’s why you never wanted to talk, never wanted anyone else to know.” 

and even though that doesn’t really get them closer to solving any of their problems, not in any real or tangible way, even though it doesn’t make anything any better, the idea of it still makes jungkook laugh. 

“you thought i was still in the closet? hyung, i don’t think i was ever in a closet to begin with.” jungkook is still laughing, but it’s bittersweet. taehyung thought he was struggling with being gay, when actually jungkook is fine with being gay, but struggling with being in love with six people at once. six people who he will keep loving, keep seeing every single day, but never get to be with. "you know i've dated guys before, hyung. sort of. as best i could." as much as he could force himself to half-assedly try to make it work, he means.

“then why, jungkook?” taehyung isn’t laughing. isn’t smiling. “why have we only ever kissed once? why don’t you ever talk to me, when we touch each other? why is it okay for you to date other people, other men even, but when it's me you don't want anyone else to know?” 

“because it's you! because if we told everyone else, they’d probably be ecstatic for us! because it's you and that means something, hyung.” jungkook’s voice rises. he’s getting frustrated. he’s bouncing between crying and laughing and thinking he understands what’s happening and realizing he doesn’t in fact, understand a fucking thing. “the hyungs would let us be together and you’d let them let us. you’d let them support us just like you’d let me think i was enough for you because you’re too fucking selfless and i won’t let you do that to yourself. you don’t want me. you have hoseok. you could have any of them. you can have all of them, hyung. and you don’t want me.” 

taehyung doesn’t say anything. he breathes hard through his nose and looks at jungkook, stares at him like he’s waiting for the expression on jungkook’s face to crack, like he’s waiting for jungkook to peel a mask off, like he’s waiting for something to happen that isn’t going to happen, because jungkook won’t take this back. 

“i am really starting to get sick,” taehyung says eventually, “of people in this group acting like i haven’t been making it clear for years now that i want to fuck every single one of you stupid.” 

jungkook frowns. really properly frowns, at that. 

“i don’t think you make a secret of how you feel, hyung,” jungkook doesn’t know why he’s reassuring taehyung right now when it feels like it should maybe be the other way around, but still, the point stands, “i can absolutely see times where it’s been obvious that you were interested in the other hyungs.” 

taehyung laughs, finally. it’s a quick, small burst of sound. it’s incredulous. 

jungkook stares. 

“you can see how i’ve made it obvious that i wanted the other hyungs but you think i don’t want you when i’ve had you crawling into my bed for years now? is that really your position on this, jungkook? would you like to maybe phone a friend? or get a fucking clue?” 

jungkook doesn’t really understand what taehyung is trying to say. is he - does he mean - 

“wait. do you … do you want me?” 

quick and easy. rip the band-aid off. one bright burst of pain and then it’ll be done. 

“yes, jungkook. i want you. i wanted you even when i had you.” taehyung says, leaning in to brush the tip of his nose against jungkook’s, not trying to kiss him, not yet, but getting so, so close that jungkook’s stomach swoops, “even then, i wanted you more. i always want you more,” he says and jungkook has to close his eyes. he lifts his chin. he swallows hard. 

“and the other hyungs?” he has to ask. has to know. 

“i want them too. but that’s not just me, right?” taehyung asks and jungkook swallows again. this time, taehyung’s mouth is there. jungkook’s adam’s apple bobs in his throat and taehyung’s warm, soft lips follow the movement. 

“i want them as well,” jungkook says, so quiet. scared, still, but equal parts excited now. “do you think … you and hobi hyung. hobi and namjoon. do -” it’s hard to say. it seems impossible to believe. “do they want us too?” 

“i hope so,” taehyung says and even that’s something huge. that alone might be enough for jungkook - just the knowledge that taehyung wants it too, that he’s not alone in this. “i think so,” taehyung is able to say and jungkook trusts him. jungkook should have trusted him from the very beginning. 

“i’m sorry, hyung,” jungkook says and he reaches for taehyung, then. 

he opens his eyes, eyelashes fluttering. he puts both hands on taehyung’s shoulders and keeps him where he is here, doesn’t let him move back. he blinks slow and long when taehyung lifts his head from where it had been dipped beneath jungkook’s chin. his face is so close, his mouth right there, his eyes on jungkook like he’s trying hard to keep himself in check. because he wants jungkook. he’s looking at jungkook like he _wants_ him and it’s not a brand new expression. it’s not something jungkook has never seen before. 

“i’m sorry, hyung. i should have told you. i should have been braver.” 

taehyung smiles at him. this soft, secret seeming thing that jungkook wants to feel. 

“can i kiss you now? please can i -” before jungkook can finish speaking, taehyung is there. 

he presses his mouth to jungkook’s like he’s trying to leave a mark. he doesn’t move for a second, just holds still and stays there, his mouth slanted across jungkook’s, their lips slotted together. he breathes in through his nose and then sighs against jungkook’s mouth. 

jungkook hears it and feels it. 

jungkook can smell his own shampoo in taehyung’s still wet hair. 

taehyung’s hands are on jungkook’s knees and he’s kissing jungkook. he’s not just letting jungkook kiss him, he’s kissing jungkook. because he wants to. because he wants him. 

something in jungkook bursts. a thousand doubts, a million haunting little fears fall away. barricades drop, walls come down. jungkook leaps a hurdle, bounds over another one and this one, he realizes, this was the last one. 

jungkook floods. with want, with love. with certainty. 

nothing is really certain, not yet. not everything, at least. 

but this is. 

taehyung is. 

and jungkook _erupts_. 

his hands move first, sliding up and up and up, the whisper of his fingers on taehyung’s neck, his hands cradling taehyung’s skull, his fingers gripping at taehyung’s hair. 

jungkook opens his mouth against taehyung’s and his tongue is at taehyung’s bottom lip, he’s moving, he’s shifting forward, up and over until he’s in taehyung’s lap and taehyung helps him, taehyung holds him steady until they’re kissing wet and messy in the middle of jungkook’s bed, jungkook’s thighs slung over taehyung’s, taehyung’s hands gripping hard at jungkook’s ass, tugging him down into him, helping him move against him. 

kissing taehyung is nothing like kissing yoongi. 

kissing taehyung now is nothing like kissing taehyung that first time had been. 

taehyung falls back and pulls jungkook to come with him, lies back with jungkook on him and it’s the easiest thing in the world, jungkook finds, to just melt over taehyung. 

it’s the closest they’ve ever been. 

jungkook holds himself up with one arm bracketed over taehyung’s head and with his other hand he tucks taehyung’s wet hair behind his ear, traces the pad of his thumb down the line of the tendon standing out against taehyung’s neck. he cups taehyung’s pec, feels taehyung’s breath hitch against his mouth when he drags his a blunt fingernail across taehyung’s nipple. taehyung is so warm underneath him and jungkook wants to touch him everywhere. so jungkook does. 

they lay like that for hours. kissing off and on, jungkook pulling away sometimes just to lie with his head on taehyung’s chest, his ear pressed to taehyung’s heart and hearing it, feeling it beat. 

taehyung is patient with him. loving and sweet and kind and he’d always have been this way, jungkook realizes, if jungkook had just let him. 

“i’m sorry it took so long. i’m sorry you had to wait so long for me,” jungkook says at one point, his head pillowed on taehyung’s shoulder and his fingers playing across the hot, flushed plump of taehyung’s lips, his kiss bruised mouth wet and so, so soft to jungkook’s touch.

taehyung smiles at him, his lips curving under jungkook’s fingertips. 

“i think it was always going to take a long time, ‘guk,” he says, pushing kisses into jungkook’s palm, dragging his lips across the line of jungkook’s knuckles, “i wish it had been different, i wish we’d both been brave enough to talk about how we felt, but i’m glad i got to wait it out with you. i wouldn’t change that part of it. i’ve loved every single time i’ve gotten to touch you, ‘guk,” he says and jungkook, feeling silly, feeling seen and known and wanted still, wanted because of all that, blushes. 

jungkook has loved getting to touch taehyung, too. 

but getting to touch him knowing that he is loved? 

that’s brand new. 

and jungkook is going to do it right, this time. 

when their yawns become too loud and too long to keep kissing around, jungkook crawls off of taehyung and they both wriggle down under his covers, fall asleep curled up together, pressed close. 

jungkook closes his eyes knowing that when he wakes up in the morning, taehyung will still be there. 

tomorrow, everything is going to be different. 

tomorrow is going to be the start of something new. 

the right thing, the right way. 

taehyung kisses jungkook’s cheek, kisses his mouth and then tucks his face against jungkook’s shoulder, presses his mouth there and sleeps. 

jungkook falls asleep so excited to wake up. 

he can’t wait to get started. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

the next morning, jungkook opens his eyes to a blank stretch of sheets, the other side of his bed clear and empty. 

he stops. everything in him just stops. and then he’s a stone sinking to the bottom of the ocean. he starts to curl in on himself, goes to bring his knees up and fold himself down over them, but never gets there. 

when he moves, he feels it. 

there’s an arm around his waist. 

noticing that kicks off a chain of events, awareness coming tripping over him, quick and fast. 

there’s a nose pressed into the hair behind his ear. 

there is heat all along his back. 

there’s a leg pushed between his own. 

there’s a mouth pressed to his neck and moving now, a snuffling sound, a question. 

jungkook turns in taehyung’s arms and hugs him hard, holds him close. 

“hmphwha? guk? mrnig?” taehyung says in response and jungkook smiles and holds on tight. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

jungkook finds himself wishing for something, anything to hold onto when taehyung has him pressed face first into the wall of his shower and biting at his own forearm to muffle the sounds he can’t stop himself from making. 

taehyung’s cock is so big, feels so good inside him and jungkook has been thinking about this for years but not even his filthiest fantasies came close. 

“tae, i - ohgod please - taehyung! i -” 

taehyung face, when it comes into view, is mostly smirk. 

“you what, bun? what are you trying to say, baby?” he’s laughing at jungkook and jungkook doesn’t blame him. he can’t really blame himself, either, though. 

“i’ve never -” he starts to say, tries to say and that makes taehyung pause. 

“you’ve never? never what, jungkook? never done this before?” taehyung moves as if to pull out, pulls back and leaves jungkook’s back cold, his whole body trembling in a shiver until he can reach for taehyung and pull him back in, keep him close. 

jungkook doesn’t know how it would help to stop now, if this was him losing his virginity, but taehyung must be weirdly sentimental or something. that’s kind of sweet, jungkook thinks. probably helps his cause, too. 

“i’ve fucked a bunch of people,” jungkook assures him and taehyung is slowly, so slowly pushing back into jungkook until he’s all the way inside, his hips pressed up into the back of jungkook’s thighs. 

“that’s really romantic, ‘guk, you’re really making me feel so special,” taehyung says but he’s not mad, he’s smiling slightly when jungkook glances back at him and that’s what jungkook loves about this. it’s easy. it’s so fucking easy, to talk to taehyung. to tell him what feels good. to ask for what he wants. they’re best friends and jungkook had forgotten that. he’d tried so hard all this time to keep the part where he touched taehyung separate from that, outside of their friendship like there was nothing friendly, nothing familiar about it and that’s why it had hurt him so badly. that’s why everything got so fucked up. that’s why this feels so good. fucking taehyung is so much _fun_. 

“shut up, you ass,” jungkook bites back and then he’s biting into the bones of his own wrist again because taehyung is taking hold of him by the hips and pulling, dragging him back onto his cock and making jungkook’s ass bounce off taehyung’s hips. he’s fucking jungkook hard and jungkook fucking loves it. 

“i - ah! i. i saved this for you, hyung,” jungkook grits out, the words a hard little hum of sounds that pop between his teeth because taehyung has his hand between jungkook’s shoulder blades, is holding his chest to the tiled wall. the spray from the shower is hitting taehyung’s back and every time he throws his head back to soak his hair, it jostles him into jungkook at a different angle, makes jungkook see stars. 

“huh? saved what?” taehyung asks and jungkook knows him so well that he can tell just from the sound of his voice that taehyung’s eyes are closed. 

“my ass, hyung,” jungkook says sweetly, putting his hands on the wall to find the leverage he needs to push back, to fuck himself on taehyung’s cock when taehyung goes still. “i never let anyone fuck my ass before. only ever wanted you inside me, hyung.” 

taehyung is still and silent for a second longer and then he’s twisting jungkook’s face to the side with a hand knotted in his wet hair, pressing his cheek to the wall again. he hooks his arm low around jungkook’s belly and lifts him a little, encourages him to stand up a bit taller so taehyung is hot all along his back now, his thighs pressed to the back of jungkook’s, his chest to jungkook’s shoulders. 

“not just me, though. right, ‘guk? you want all your hyungs inside you, right? want to let all of us put our cocks in this hot little hole you’ve been saving just for us.” 

jungkooks tries to turn away, tries to press his forehead to the tiles but not because he’s embarrassed. because he’s instantly closer to coming than he wants to be, because he wants this to go on forever. 

“isn’t that right, jungkook-ah? how often do you fuck total strangers and only manage to get off because you’re thinking about the six of us filling you up like you really want, huh? do you have to stuff your own fingers in here or do you get other people to do it for you? do you want us to take turns, ‘guk? want all of us one after the other?” 

jungkook twists in the hold taehyung has him in and gets at his fingers, sucks two into his mouth and moans when they part around his tongue. 

“you want it too, hyung,” jungkook reminds him and taehyung nods, he thinks, but mostly taehyung is staring blankly at his fingers at jungkook’s lips, gets a grip of jungkook’s chin and fucks him almost like it’s automatic, totally mindless and just pure instinct, now. he’s got jungkook where he wants him and his body knows exactly what to do. “you want all of us just like i do. you fucked hobi-hyung, didn’t you? i know you did, hyung. saw it in how you touched him.” jungkook licks at the fingers taehyung has parted around his mouth to let him speak. he’s getting off on what jungkook is saying just as much as jungkook is. “was so fucking jealous i wanted to scream, tae. wanted to push my way in between you two and yell and cry and pout until you both fucked me.” 

taehyung is the one that seems lost for words now, nothing but a shivery moan slipping out of him when jungkook spreads his legs a little wider, reaches back to grab taehyung’s ass. it clenches in his palm, his muscles going tight every time taehyung bottoms out in jungkook and jungkook has to close his eyes, lets his jaw hang in taehyung’s hand and just takes it when taehyung starts fucking him like maybe he wants everyone to know what they’re doing in here because the harder he goes the louder jungkook gets and those sounds only spur him on further. 

it’s obscene, the sounds they make together. even over the dull roar of the water jungkook can hear the wet slap of taehyung’s balls against his, the crude slick slurp of lube every time taehyung pulls out and then pushes his cock back in, jungkook’s hole sucking it in. taehyung’s fingers in him had been perfect, he’d touched jungkook like he knew all of jungkook’s secrets because he probably did, he knew him better than anyone else and he was exploiting that fact mercilessly, sucking beautifully sharp little bites across jungkook’s shoulders because he knew exactly what that was doing to jungkook. 

but that knowledge was not a one way street. two could play at that game and jungkook does not play to lose. 

“you and hoseok and namjoon weren’t the only ones who kissed yesterday,” jungkook says, low so taehyung probably has to strain to hear it. “i saw the hyungs kissing on the couch and i wondered if that meant i was allowed to kiss hyungs too so i went to yoongi’s room and asked.” 

“asked if you were allowed?” taehyung wants to know and he sounds confused but he never for one second stops fucking jungkook and that makes jungkook giggle. getting fucked is maybe making jungkook a little dopey. but it doesn’t seem like taehyung is faring much better. 

“nope,” jungkook pops the ‘p’ and feels it when taehyung’s gaze zeroes in on his mouth. he pouts a little for effect when he says “i asked if i could kiss hyung.” 

taehyung leans in, breathless when he asks “and what did he say?” 

“he didn’t say anything,” jungkook draws it out, teasing. “he just put his tongue in my mouth instead.” 

taehyung leans the rest of the way in and kisses jungkook hard, hungry for it, starving maybe. he puts his hand to the wall of the shower right next to jungkook’s head and leaves it up to jungkook whether or not he braces himself when taehyung’s hips start to hammer into him, deep and fast. 

jungkook doesn’t. he lets himself fall against the wall and just stays there, stays still and takes the fucking that he asked for. 

“such a hot little shit, jungkook. always such a fucking brat, but that’s about to change. m’gonna fuck the brattiness right out of you, ‘guk. gonna put you on your knees and make you beg when you get like this.” 

jungkook giggles again, sounds and feels drunk, slurs his words when he speaks. 

“s’not gonna change a thing, sorry hyung. put me wherever you want, do whatever you want to me. i’ll beg, but that won’t make me behave. i’m gonna be such a bad little boy for you, hyung.” 

taehyung swears, low and loud and his mouth is high on the back of jungkook’s neck now, his teeth open around the top of jungkook’s spine when jungkook feels his cock jerk inside him at his words and jungkook doesn’t stand a chance, he’s shooting on the wall in front of him, his cock pulsing, completely untouched. 

half laughing, half broken little groans, taehyung lifts his mouth to jungkook’s ear. 

“i dunno, ‘guk. coming on your hyung’s cock just because you love getting fucked feels a lot like something a good boy would do.” 

jungkook clenches around him, half simple instinct because he’s shivering now with oversensitivity, half just to spite taehyung and then taehyung’s hips are kicking against him, his whole body going rigid when he grips jungkook to him tight and spills inside him. 

“oh,” jungkook moans, pushing up into it even though it’s too much, way too soon because it’s the first time anyone’s ever come inside him and he can feel it, he can feel taehyung’s come in him. it’s wet. it’s wet in a way jungkook’s never known before and it’s hot, almost. “oh. feels nice. thank you, hyung.” 

taehyung lifts his head from jungkook’s shoulder to kiss him, syrupy sweet and slow. 

“see? such a good boy, ‘guk. you’re gonna be so good for your hyungs.” 

jungkook shivers again and taehyung holds him tight, keeps him warm. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 

everyone else is awake, when they’re dried off and dressed for the day, tumble into the kitchen like they’ve forgotten they’re not the only two people on earth. 

yoongi turns to look at them from the stove and seokjin stops chopping to do the same. 

namjoon and jimin are sitting side by side at the table and hoseok is across from them. 

all of them are staring. waiting. 

jungkook doesn’t know what to say, but that’s okay. 

“so that brings your total so far to two, taehyung,” yoongi says and jungkook’s grip of taehyung’s hand gets preemptively tighter, but taehyung doesn’t try to let go. “right? seok-ah yesterday, jungkook … last night? again this morning?” 

taehyung doesn’t correct him. doesn’t say anything. 

the atmosphere is tense. the room is full of tension, but it’s not necessarily the bad kind. just the kind that they’ve all been steadily building up for years now. it could go bad, probably, jungkook thinks. but he’s confident now that they won’t let it. 

“are you just gonna fuck us one by one? do you have a schedule? are you going to cc us on that or do we just wait around until we’ve had our turn and you’re done?” yoongi sounds mildly irritated, but not angry. jungkook’s pretty sure he understands why, but he doesn’t step in. it doesn’t feel like it’s his place to speak.

“yeah,” taehyung says, finally and everything goes somehow even more still, though no one had been moving. 

“that’s the plan. i want to fuck every single one of you.” he looks around at them all in turn and they all meet his eye, all except jimin, who remains looking down at his own hands on the table. no one says anything. 

“i’m pretty sure all of us want to fuck each other, but for some reason you all decided to eye fuck me for a few years without ever actually doing anything about it, so since none of you seem bothered to, i’m gonna do something about it. i’m gonna fuck all of you, one by one. but you’re wrong about what happens then, yoongi hyung, because i won’t be done. not then and not ever.” 

yoongi’s eyes fall away from him at that, but only for a second before they come right back, snagging on taehyung’s hand clasped around jungkook’s before he’s meeting taehyung’s gaze again. 

“so there it is,” taehyung says, shrugging his shoulders and then tugging jungkook toward the table, sitting down next to hoseok and grabbing plates and chopsticks for him and jungkook. 

“figure out how you all feel about that before i come find you, i guess,” taehyung suggests and jungkook would laugh at that if he wasn’t focused completely on not getting hard at the breakfast table instead. 

again, no one says anything. 

“oh. and yoongi hyung?” taehyung asks and yoongi’s eyes snap to him. 

“what?” yoongi says and it sounds like the word is yanked out of him, pulled from the very depths of him on a fishhook. 

“do you wanna be next?” taehyung asks it without looking at him and that’s the only way jungkook can tell that he’s nervous because he doesn’t for one second sound it. 

everyone looks at yoongi. 

yoongi looks only at taehyung. 

“ _yes_ ,” yoongi says and taehyung nods and then no one speaks for some time. 

conversation pours in slowly, simply if not necessarily easily. 

jimin asks jungkook to pass him something and jungkook does. and then jimin smiles his thanks and jungkook gets dazed thinking about how pretty jimin’s bare face is and then hoseok almost knocks something over but tries to blame it on namjoon. so then the two of them are bickering loudly and seokjin is jumping in to make it worse and yoongi is reaching out to tap at jungkook’s leg under the table and then jungkook is grabbing for his hand and holding on and seokjin asks how come jungkook gets shower sex and to have his hand held first thing in the morning and taehyung is holding his hand out palm up across the table. 

without hesitation, seokjin takes it and hoseok piles his on top too and then namjoon does as well. 

yoongi adds his and jungkook’s hands to the stack and everyone is looking at jimin until he rolls his eyes and completes it. 

everyone is smiling when they get up from the table and it stays that way all day. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title from this chapter is from the song 'blue' by keshi who makes nothing but excellent songs that give me a lot of taekook and jungkook specific feelings so you should check him out on youtube or spotify or both. it'll be good for you.


	4. taehyung/yoongi - ain't no 'must be this tall to ride'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “why is tonight so far away?” taehyung asks, whines actually and yoongi closes his eyes and opens his mouth against his skin, against the collar of seokjin’s shirt and just breathes him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- all i have to say about this chapter is oh the ot7 of it all. oh we're really in it now, bangtannies. 
> 
> \- there's a brief stray into pain play territory in this one. just a lil bit. just a hint. just some super chill lowkey biting between bros. 
> 
> \- if you feel like you must say anything about who tops / bottoms in this chapter or any other, i ask you first to consider this - _don't_. 
> 
> \- i realized today that i have 9 days to write two whole fics to finish off my bbb card so the next couple updates on this might take a little longer. 
> 
> \- as usual i'm always on twitter: @hwifighting is my main and i posted some size queen namkook porn over on my twitfic acc @mockturtletale so if you're into that kind of thing, go check it out. 
> 
> \- as always, this is for maye, the only person with perma-rights. ♥

yoongi could kick himself. 

“yah, jimin. kick me,” yoongi says and jimin looks at him blank faced for a second and then kicks yoongi hard across the back of his thighs. he shifts up onto the ball of his foot and raises his leg, knee out at a right angle to do it so he really nails yoongi and looks fucking gorgeous doing it. 

“your form is perfect. you do everything really well,” yoongi tells jimin and when jimin looks at him, askance, yoongi thinks he probably has a mirroring expression on his own face. 

“are you flirting with me after you just asked taehyung to fuck you as a prelude to our breakfast, hyung?” jimin asks and yoongi is surprised to find that yes, in fact he is. 

as usual, it’s not difficult to lie about it, though. 

“of course not, jimin-ah. i’m just complimenting your form. your body is your craft, isn’t it? you take care of it so well. you do incredible things with it. that’s … all i meant.” 

okay, it’s kind of difficult to lie about it, yoongi amends. 

jimin folds his arms across his chest and stares yoongi down until yoongi starts to sweat. just a bit. 

“i’m not a bottom,” jimin says finally and he says it like he’s mad already. 

“okay,” yoongi says, confused. “i wasn’t trying to fuck you? well. i was. i am. but i like to bottom. and i don’t like to make any kind of assumptions about the sex lives of my best friends.” that sounds like a better way to put it than simply saying ‘what the fuuuuuuuuuuck jimin’, which for the record is what yoongi wants to say. 

“that’s … nice of you,” jimin decides, only sounding mostly suspicious now. “you’d really want to fuck me?” the hard set of whatever he’s been trying to project here starts to crack and he sounds unsure now. if yoongi didn’t hope better, he’d say jimin sounded nervous. if yoongi really wanted to hurt his own feelings, he’d think about how jimin is sometimes so very insecure, still. 

yoongi nods. 

“i think you’re beautiful. i’d want to touch you any way that would make you feel good, if you wanted me to,” yoongi says and he doesn’t know why he’s getting a little choked up. today has been such a fucking weird day. this is so, so goddamn overwhelming. 

“that’s a lot. all of this is a lot,” jimin says, looking down at his shoes. when he looks up again, he seems to be debating something with himself. “hyung could i -” 

yoongi’s body tries to take a step forward, his foot twitching, but he makes himself stay where he is. jimin is always the first one to go in for a hug, the one you can count on to open up for it the easiest when you need a chest to bury your head in. but for all that he’s explosive with his physical affection most of the time, he also has moments - not many, but some - when he definitely does not want to be touched. yoongi is intimately familiar with that feeling and he will respect it wherever and whenever he finds it. 

“could i hug you?” jimin finishes and it’s fucking weird to hear jimin ask, but it’s also not weird at all because this thing with taehyung, with all of them, has thrown them all off course at least a little bit, but it seems to have tossed jimin far and wide. yoongi hasn’t seen him like this in years and he doesn’t like it, but he’s glad it’s surfacing now. he’d thought they’d tackled all of jimin’s self esteem issues. jimin has come so far from where he’d started, from where the beginning of this had taken him and some things don’t ever go away for good but this looks exactly like it used to and yoongi won’t stand for that, yoongi won’t ever let jimin go back there again. it’s good that this came up again because now that yoongi knows it’s still there, he won’t rest until it’s dealt with. 

“yeah, of course, jimin-ah,” yoongi says and opens his arms for jimin to walk into. 

jimin touches him differently, holds him stiffly at first and then less so. it feels like this is the first time they’ve touched like this. like maybe jimin is trying to learn how yoongi’s body feels against his all over again. 

yoongi lifts a hand, cups the back of jimin’s head in the palm of his hand and tilts his face down into jimin’s neck, just lets it rest there. jimin shivers and goes stiff in his arms and then the tension just seems to drain out of him all at once. he feels boneless against yoongi, almost fluid all of a sudden. 

“you know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to? don’t do anything you’re not ready for,” yoongi says, because he knows that jimin knows that but he knows too how hard jimin pushes himself. how much pressure he puts on himself. jimin injures himself most often simply because he tries too fucking hard. he goes further quicker than he should and then he blames himself when he gets hurt. 

for a long moment, jimin doesn’t reply. he readjusts his hold of yoongi, lifts one hand to press between his shoulders, to pull him in tighter. 

when he speaks, his voice is low and so very quiet. it’s barely more than a hum. 

“but what if i do want to, hyung. what if i am ready,” he says and yoongi understands him better in that moment than he maybe ever has before. 

“then we’ll do this together,” yoongi says and jimin drops his face into the crook of yoongi’s neck and he steps in closer and for a long time, he does not let go. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

everything is made up of layers, yoongi has found. 

sentences that seem pretty black or white are a hundred shades in between in reality. 

moments that pass like a freight train are in fact a thousand little slices of time all sandwiched together to create blocks of colour, a punch of feeling that seems to be solid but really is not. 

most of the time, it’s quicker and easier and more efficient to pretend that you can’t see the layers. 

not everybody can and hardly anybody wants to so it’s just the simpler, cleaner option to act like they’re not there. 

nothing really changes if you treat someone’s sentence like it’s black or like it’s white even though it’s neither, for the most part. 

most of the moments that make up their day aren’t important enough that the alteration of one would throw anything off. they all build up into something big, something lasting, but if the order shuffled a little that would still be the case. their days and weeks wouldn’t pivot if a small thing shifted, if a sentence or a beat or a look or someone’s touch was taken out and blown up and rearranged on a minute level. the details would change but the overall and the lasting effect would remain the same. 

but some moments, some things, feel different. 

sometimes, yoongi finds himself in things that feel like they could change everything, if he just let them. 

if he let himself peel those moments or those words or those looks down to their layers. 

(taehyung’s hand on his wrist, taehyung catching yoongi staring at his bare back, taehyung asking yoongi if he wants to sleep here tonight, taehyung, taehyung, taehyung, taehyung.) 

and the more time that passes, the more often he finds himself caught in that pause - held in amber when taehyung looks at him, when hoseok touches him, when namjoon asks what yoongi is thinking about when yoongi knows he already knows the answer - the more sure yoongi gets that he is ready to let those moments change them. 

but being ready for it and wanting it doesn’t seem like quite enough, somehow. 

it’s never seemed like it was enough because as much as yoongi wants it and thinks he’s ready for it too, being the one to set the change in motion still feels like too much for yoongi. 

he’s not sure this is supposed to start with him. 

but then it doesn’t. 

it starts and it’s got absolutely nothing to do with him. 

and that, yoongi finds, makes him fucking pissy. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

two vans come for them, that morning. 

taehyung and jimin and namjoon are ready the earliest so they take the first car even though it gets there ahead of their scheduled time to leave. 

yoongi is hanging out in the front hall, scrolling idly through his phone and not paying attention to whatever seokjin and hoseok are talking about when jungkook finally shows up, barrelling out of his room like a goth puppy or maybe a soft canon ball, as usual. yoongi doesn’t even look up, his peripheral vision picking up jungkook coming up the corridor like a storm bearing down on them, dark and fast. 

there’s the thick stomp of jungkook’s boots getting closer and then there’s a dark blur that’s way too close and then there’s movement and it’s yoongi that’s moving because he’s back against the wall now and he doesn’t remember moving because he didn’t, jungkook pushed him here. jungkook has him held here, now. 

“hyung, can i?” jungkook asks and he’s probably asking if he can kiss yoongi because that’s all they’ve done so far, that’s probably all they’ve got time for, but he could be asking if he can fuck yoongi right here, up against the wall right next to their friends when they’re all about to go to work. 

“yeah,” yoongi says and doesn’t understand why jungkook doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything. his hands are trembling a little where they’re holding yoongi’s shoulders to the wall but yoongi can tell from the very familiar look in jungkook’s wide eyes that he’s just shot through with adrenaline right now. why isn’t he moving? why isn’t he doing something? 

“but do you want me to?” jungkook asks and his voice hitches around the words, it comes out way too quiet and yoongi sighs so deep it goes to his very bones. 

jungkook is bigger than him in almost every way it’s possible to be. he’s just plain big, all stupidly appealing muscles, tall and broad and even taller today than usual because of his big dumb boots. it takes far too much effort for yoongi to get him pushed back against the opposite wall but he looks pretty good once he’s got him there. he’s wide eyed and staring between yoongi’s face and yoongi’s hands on his chest and he actually gasps when yoongi kicks at his boots until he makes enough room for yoongi to stand between them. 

“i want to do this,” yoongi says and then he leans his weight in on his hands and presses up to kiss jungkook. jungkook’s hand goes right to yoongi’s hair and he slumps a little against the wall, slides down it until they’re lined up properly and yoongi doesn’t have to stretch to reach him. jungkook kisses so sweetly, opens up so easily for yoongi that it’s the simplest thing in the world to get lost in it, so easy to just press himself to jungkook and take what he wants. 

“wow, hyung,” jungkook says when they break apart and yoongi would laugh at that or maybe just lean back in to kiss jungkook again, but he is interrupted before he can do either. 

“yeah. wow, hyung,” hoseok says and when yoongi turns his head seokjin and hoseok are both staring at them. seokjin looks amused. hoseok just looks hungry. 

“me too, hyung? can i, now?” hoseok asks and it’s probably not the smartest move to make if they want to make it out of this apartment on time or in any fit shape for work today but it’s hoseok and jungkook is gaping at the two of them, open mouthed and wide eyed like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, like he wasn’t just licking up under yoongi’s top lip five seconds ago, like they didn’t all hear him get enthusiastically fucked first thing this morning. 

yoongi yanks hoseok in against him, his hand knotted in the collar of hoseok’s shirt and he pulls so hard that hoseok has to brace himself with a hand on jungkook’s shoulder so he doesn’t fall onto them. 

kissing hoseok is nothing like kissing jungkook. 

with jungkook, there’s a push and pull. this constant thread of tension that yoongi can’t ignore because everything feels like too much or not enough and yoongi always wants more and more and more. 

with hoseok, yoongi isn’t aware of anything at all. he presses his mouth to hoseok’s and loses all sense of everything else. hoseok’s palm is big and hot on the side of yoongi’s neck and someone whimpers and it’s probably yoongi but maybe it’s jungkook because he’s nosing at the other side of yoongi’s throat and hoseok is kissing him so skillfully, so fucking nicely that when the haze clears because hoseok has pulled back, yoongi finds that he has tried to climb hoseok. he has one knee slung up over hoseok’s hip and he’s leaning on jungkook’s shoulder to give him leverage and he has no idea why hoseok is the one that’s panting because yoongi is starting to get hard in his jeans and it’s not even 9am and jungkook is quietly muttering ‘oh my god oh my god’ under his breath like a mantra. 

“well, this has been just lovely, but the car is here,” seokjin says and yoongi’s glad, because he couldn’t talk right now if he had to. 

yoongi drops his leg back to the ground and lets go of jungkook’s shoulder, straightens his clothes out and reaches for the bag he’d abandoned before all of this started and caught him unawares. hoseok and jungkook turn and head out the door, glancing back at yoongi but moving quicker when seokjin snaps his fingers at them and then slaps them both on the ass as they file past him. 

when yoongi has slung the strap of his bag over his head and got his breath back under control he looks up and starts to head for the door too, but finds seokjin blocking his way. he hadn’t realized seokjin was still here. 

and that was some serious oversight on his part, he realizes, when seokjin’s eyes go to yoongi’s mouth and then his face changes, his gaze sharpening, his lips pursed when he hums. he reaches for yoongi and yoongi reaches for him at the same time and then yoongi finds himself held up against the back of their front door with his legs around seokjin’s waist, sucking at seokjin’s tongue. 

again, it’s nothing at all like kissing either jungkook or hoseok. 

kissing seokjin feels like drowning. 

seokjin is his hyung and his roommate and probably, if it came down to it, the person that yoongi has been most often the most vulnerable with and that makes it nerve-wracking to be like this with him for the very first time, but it also makes it nothing but simple to follow his instincts and to wind his arms around seokjin’s neck and lock his ankles behind him and hold on tight while seokjin slowly, methodically takes him apart at the mouth. 

by the time they make it downstairs to the car, hoseok and jungkook are looking at them knowingly and giggling in this good-nervous, infectious kind of way and yoongi wants to be mad at how seokjin looks totally unruffled, still as perfectly composed and put together as ever when yoongi feels like he’s just been pulled apart in some kind of extra horny early morning tug of war. 

but, well. hoseok holds his hand between the seats and when they’re climbing out of the van jungkook bumps up against his back like a huge but very gentle pinball and then just stays there, makes yoongi walk into the building with jungkook on his heels like a too close, far too hot bodyguard. 

seokjin slips his hand into yoongi’s back pocket when they’re standing around reviewing some footage from yesterday and he feels taehyung’s eyes on them both, feels taehyung’s eyes trail purposefully between him and seokjin and jungkook and hoseok too. 

yoongi wonders if taehyung’s innate and overtly sexual demonic nature means that he can tell instantly that yoongi was passed around between the three of them this morning the second the rest of them had left for work. 

taehyung watches him all day and yoongi watches him right back and wonders, if taehyung did know, if he’d even care at all. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

the whole day is weird and wired. 

jungkook seems to have tapped back into his late teen stage of having way too much fucking energy and can’t seem to sit still or stop trying to touch their butts. it’s annoying for five seconds and then it’s just really irritatingly cute and yoongi finds himself locking eyes with hoseok while both of them fail to hide their amusement at jungkook chasing namjoon around, yelling ‘please hyung, i just wanna hold the whole world in my hands.’ 

hoseok is smiling more, being louder in general and yoongi loves him like that. yoongi loves him all the time, but he loves him especially when he lets himself be the center of attention and doesn’t shy away from it, doesn’t try to make himself seem smaller. 

seokjin and jimin account for the ‘weird’ part of the day. seokjin acts like nothing is different at all and jimin is quiet still, which is in itself not too strange for him. but he’s by himself as much as he can be, it seems and that’s unusual, that doesn’t sit very well with yoongi. he goes to him as much as he can, tries to draw him back into the group when he sits by himself during breaks, but gives up on that when jimin still shies away and stays by his side himself, instead. 

“i don’t mean to be a downer,” jimin says at some point and he’s looking at yoongi like he thinks he’s going to disagree. “i just need a minute,” he continues when yoongi doesn’t say anything and yoongi knows what he means, yoongi knows exactly what he needs. 

“there’s no rush, jimin-ah,” yoongi tells him, scooting in closer until their knees are almost touching, sitting up so straight that he’s almost actually got proper posture for once so his shoulders can shield jimin from the rest of them a little more, for a little bit longer. “nothing has to happen right now. things can change when you’re ready for that. that’s when we want you. that’s how we want you,” he says and he wants to call jimin ‘baby’, wants to call him ‘sweet boy’ and ‘lovely’ and ‘precious thing’ because he’s all of that to yoongi. he doesn’t, though. he doesn’t push it. it’s important that jimin be the one to reach out first, yoongi knows that. yoongi knows him. 

“i feel like i should think it’s weird that you’re the one being so patient and sweet with me,” jimin says, not looking at yoongi but letting his knee fall to rest against yoongi’s and not moving back. 

“but you don’t?” yoongi reads between the lines. it’s always been easy for him to do that with jimin. the two of them write more in the margins, in the spaces where words aren’t supposed to go, so it’s easy to look there first when yoongi needs to know what’s really going on in jimin’s head. 

“no. i don’t think it’s weird at all. feels nice, hyung,” jimin says and yoongi has to fold his hands into his back pockets and sit on them to keep from reaching out to jimin, to stop himself when all he wants is to hold him close. there’s time, still. they’ll get there, in time. 

yoongi is quiet and yoongi is careful and yoongi is pessimistic, on his best days. 

but being quiet allows yoongi to hear what goes unheard to everyone else. 

yoongi’s carefulness allows him to be certain, when he makes a decision at last. 

his pessimism has been learned. it’s saved him from a lot of disappointment over the years and sometimes people acknowledge it like it makes his outlook dark, like it has made his heart grow cold. and it has, but that’s not a bad thing. when things fall apart, yoongi usually saw it coming and knew to prepare himself for it. it doesn’t hurt so much, when he’s gotten used to it. not everything ends badly but the things that do don’t surprise yoongi, don’t hurt him as much as they used to when he was young and thought that everything good was possible and everything possible had to be good. 

disappointment still stops yoongi in his tracks sometimes, but it never threatens to stop him entirely anymore. 

attuning himself to disappointment and the signs and experience of failure also has a rarely seen but wholly brilliant bright side. 

because when yoongi listens to all the things that are and are not said and looks for and weeds out and sorts through the threads of looming disaster, the paths of possible disappointment, he can be sure of what he’s left with, then. 

the rest of them are maybe figuring it out, or have been slowly getting there for a while now. 

but yoongi already knows. 

for yoongi, there’s no more reason to doubt. 

this is going to work. 

they are going to happen. 

and it’s going to be good. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

yoongi is coming back from the bathroom when taehyung finally nabs him. 

yoongi says ‘finally’ because he’s been so caught up in everything else that’s happened so far today that he’s barely had time to register taehyung’s presence, except for how he’s always looming huge in yoongi’s periphery, an entirely unignorable draw of hotness so extreme it’s almost cruel. 

now he’s here, all up in yoongi’s space, crowding against him in an empty corridor and yoongi doesn’t think it’s fair that taehyung can look so good when he hasn’t got any makeup on, probably hasn’t brushed his hair yet today, is sweaty from dancing and wearing a tshirt that used to be seokjin’s and why is even that hot? why is taehyung so hot? what does he want from them? oh, right. he wants to fuck them. he said so. declared it, actually. and yoongi’s next. yoongi gets to be next. taehyung has his hands wrapped around both of yoongi’s wrists and yoongi would call an ambulance for himself, if he could remember the number. 

“i don’t play favourites,” taehyung says and yoongi is so busy glaring at his outrageously pretty mouth that he doesn’t even register what he’s said at first. and then it takes him a second to work out why taehyung is saying what he said. and then yoongi remembers that he’d basically thrown a tantrum this morning because taehyung decided to fuck hoseok and jungkook before him. 

“it’s not like i sat down and played the ladder game to decide the order for how i’d go through you all,” taehyung says and maybe it shouldn’t but it makes yoongi’s dick throb a little between his legs at the way he says it. taehyung has been knocking them all off kilter every day for years but that was a different kind of disorganised chaos. thinking about them all now patiently waiting their turn to be the focus of taehyung’s attention does something to yoongi that he finds he really, really likes. 

yoongi doesn’t say anything. yoongi couldn’t make words come out of his mouth right now if his very life depended on it. he clenches his teeth together and clamps his thighs together and looks directly at taehyung because letting taehyung out of his sight when he’s this close would absolutely spell his end. 

“hoseok was a total fluke,” taehyung continues. “jungkook was disaster mitigation. i didn’t plan for any of that to happen. i didn’t know either of those situations were going to go down that way, i swear.” 

yoongi would make some kind of wise crack about people just falling into taehyung’s lap but that joke wouldn’t work here because it’s not a joke when taehyung is involved. yoongi has been trying to fall into taehyung’s lap for years now. he sits there sometimes, just to get a feel for it. and also to cop a feel of taehyung. yoongi’s good at multitasking. 

“when you think about it, hyung,” taehyung says and his voice has dropped an octave or so now and oh, yoongi’s in danger, “you’re the first one i actually planned for. you’re the first one that _i_ picked,” he says and he’s still got his hands around yoongi’s wrists and that’s probably going to be yoongi’s saving grace honestly except for how … oh, no. yoongi twists in taehyung’s grip and taehyung lets him go. and that’s terrible, that’s the worst possible thing taehyung could have done because now yoongi has his arms locked up around taehyung’s neck and he’s stretching up on his tippy toes to press his hips into taehyung’s, to press his whole body into taehyung, because god, he just wants to be close. 

taehyung lets him. he wraps one arm completely around yoongi’s waist and puts his other hand in yoongi’s hair, cups his skull and cradles yoongi to him, lets yoongi basically launch himself onto him and just holds him there. 

“i’ve got you, hyung,” taehyung says, his breath against yoongi’s ear sending a shiver rippling right though him and taehyung’s arm tightens around him, soothes his trembles by holding him still. 

“i’m really, really excited for this,” yoongi says, feels safe to say because he has his face hidden in between taehyung’s neck and shoulder and he doesn’t have to look him in the eye, doesn’t have to worry that taehyung will see just how much he means it. taehyung wouldn’t judge him for it, wouldn’t make fun. yoongi’s pretty sure taehyung feels the exact same way and gets a little bit more sure when taehyung’s hand strays below his waist, cups his ass cheek in one huge hand. 

taehyung knows how badly yoongi wants this and yoongi knows that taehyung feels the same way, but he needs the illusion of clinging to his composure for just a few hours more. just a little while longer. 

because once he gets to touch taehyung for real, he’s never going to bother with composure ever again. 

“why is tonight so far away?” taehyung asks, whines actually and yoongi closes his eyes and opens his mouth against his skin, against the collar of seokjin’s shirt and just breathes him in. 

they only have to make it through a few more hours of practice and then they’ll be alone together. 

then they can have this. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

that was the plan, at least. 

before they went and fucking jinxed themselves. 

they get sent the specs for the stage they’re practicing for and it’s way, way smaller than they’d thought it would be so now they’re making last minute changes to a choreography routine that their bodies had just gotten polished to perfection so they’re stuck in the dance studio for hours longer than they’d thought they would be. 

it’s three in the morning by the time they make it back to the dorm. 

yoongi has been consoling himself since about eight pm. 

it’s fine. they’re super tired. it’s so late. tonight just won’t be the night. it’s not even actually technically night time anymore. it’s morning now and they missed their chance and it’s fine. they’ve got forever. there’s no rush, not really. so what if they have to wait another day or two? is that actually going to change anything? no. nope. not at all. so what if yoongi had been so looking forward to it that he feels a little bit like he’s going to cry. he’s not actually going to cry. it’s fine. it’s not a big deal. it’s whatever. 

he’s trudging by the time they make it back to their apartment building. he sulks in the elevator. he’s honestly starting to get pissed off again by the time he makes it through the front door. it feels like he’s going through all the stages of grief at once and all because he has to wait until tomorrow to fuck taehyung. 

everyone is quiet. it’s not like they’re shattered, it’s not like they’re not used to working hard, but it does register a little more when they have to throw their schedule out the window and just keep going and going and going. they’re not as young and spite-motivated as they were when they were rookies. well, not every day, now, at least. 

jimin puts his shoes away and heads straight for his room. namjoon is right behind him. seokjin is lying across jungkook’s back and trying to bat his hands away from the laces of his boots. jungkook is snapping his teeth at seokjin’s biceps in retaliation and predictably, they’re both giggling. seeing those two fuck would be like watching a nature documentary, yoongi decides. he’d be very on board with that. 

hoseok claps yoongi companionably on the shoulder and wanders off, leaving yoongi and taehyung alone in the front hall when seokjin and jungkook’s wrestling match spills into the living room. 

taehyung has his hands clasped behind his back. his mouth is deep set in an expression that yoongi can’t quite read. it’s not exactly a frown, not yet. 

“it’s not like we have to. we’re not on a schedule for this. we can wait until tomorrow. or the next day, even. it’s not like it really matters, right?” taehyung says and yoongi tries to stifle his sigh. 

“yeah, exactly. we don’t have to. actually, it probably makes more sense to wait. it’s late. you’re probably exhausted. it’d be better to wait,” yoongi says, because that’s just the way it is. it’s the sensible thing to do. 

taehyung nods and his mouth flattens, resigned. 

“unless -” yoongi says, starts speaking before he even really knows what he’s going to say or where he’s going with this. luckily, it seems like that one word alone is enough to get his message across. 

“yeah, yep. unless! unless is great, let’s go with unless,” taehyung says, words rapidfire quick and his whole face brightening, his eyes positively shining when he grabs for yoongi’s hand and drags him off to his room. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 

it’s brand new, being alone with taehyung and permitted, finally, to touch him but it also feels like the conclusion of a thousand moments they’ve found themselves in before. 

yoongi pushes taehyung down onto taehyung’s own bed and he’s never done that before but it almost feels like he has just because he’s thought about it so many times. 

taehyung leans back on his hands, spreads his knees apart and tilts his head back and grins at yoongi, lazy and smug and patient and fond and he’s so self-assured, so fucking confident in how hot he is and how much he knows that yoongi wants him. he pats at one of his thighs and lifts an eyebrow and yoongi kind of wants to backhand him across the face, kind of wants to crawl between his legs and lean his head on taehyung’s thigh until he gives him pats and scritches. 

they can get into that another day, though. yoongi is a man on a mission tonight. 

he kicks his jeans off and pulls his hoodie up over his head, clambers into taehyung’s lap all knees and already wandering hands in just his tshirt and briefs. taehyung’s hands go right for his ass and yoongi bites at his own smile, loves how some things truly never change. 

“yoongi-ssi,” taehyung says and yoongi snorts at him, loops his arms around his neck and makes himself comfortable. “yoongi-ssi, you look very pretty in my lap,” taehyung says and it’s a problem, because taehyung when he isn’t saying anything at all, when he’s not trying is way too much for yoongi to handle. but taehyung when he’s trying to sweet talk yoongi? with yoongi in his lap? yeah this is a situation. yoongi kind of wants to call namjoon for help, for backup, but he knows that if he did he’d just end up in the middle of a kim sandwich and yeah, not helpful. motivating, for sure. it rockets to the top of his bucket list, actually. but it’s not helpful. one tall, gorgeous, beautifully tanned man is quite enough for yoongi, thank you. for tonight, at least. tomorrow might be a different story. he’ll get back to you on that. he’ll have his people call your people. 

“are you okay, hyung?” taehyung is looking at him in vague concern even while his hand is sliding up underneath the leg of yoongi’s briefs. 

“i’m fantastic,” yoongi tells him, choosing to forgo brutal honesty for now lest taehyung get offended that he just lost a solid minute of his life to thinking about group sex right before they consumate whatever it is that they’re doing here, whatever this is going to be the beginning of, for yoongi at least. taehyung is already two deep in this, about to be three. that’s halfway there. maybe taehyung wouldn’t be at all offended by what yoongi is thinking about, actually. 

but yoongi is still a man on a mission, he reminds himself. 

“i’m just thinking about how i want you to fuck me. do you have any contributions to make? any requests?” yoongi asks and taehyung gets wide eyed for a second, his mask of absolute confidence slipping. 

“you -” taehyung tilts his head, grips hard at both of yoongi’s thighs. yoongi can feel him getting hard under his ass. one look at taehyung’s big, tanned hands on the pale skin of yoongi’s thighs has the same effect on yoongi. “you’re gonna let me - you want me to -” 

and oh, that’s cute. that’s so unbearably adorable. 

“i think i wanna ride you,” yoongi decides there and then. “what do you think?” 

taehyung’s throat works around a swallow and yoongi grins. 

“yeah, we. we can do that. i can do that,” taehyung says and he’s fighting to get his composure back and yoongi knows he will, but it’s sweet to see him lose it for a second. 

“are you nervous to fuck your hyung?” yoongi asks and taehyung’s answering expression could only be described as a scowl. 

“no,” he snaps and you wouldn’t even hear the note of defensiveness if you weren’t looking for it. sucks for him that yoongi was. “m’not nervous. i can fuck you, hyung. i’ll fuck you so well you’ll thank me, after,” he says and there it is, that absolutely unbearable confidence of his. it’s hot. confidence has always been a turn on for yoongi but it’s next level on someone that looks like taehyung. that’s probably why it’s crazy amounts of satisfying to rile him up and shake that confidence, too. 

“i don’t know, taehyung-ah,” yoongi says, pouting because he can be an unbearable little bastard when he wants to, too, “i’ve gotten fucked kind of a lot. like … a lot of people who really knew what they were doing have handled my ass just how i like. do you even know what i like? do you have any idea what i’m into?” yoongi smiles a little, almost like a wince, an apologetic twist to it like he’s trying to be kind. he just wants to see what taehyung will say, is all. he’s just trying to make him react. 

and boy, does taehyung react. 

whatever self-doubt he’d momentarily stumbled into is gone again in an instant. 

yoongi has like .5 of a second to brace himself for it as he watches taehyung’s expression darken and then he’s up to his neck in it. 

taehyung puts his hand to the collar of yoongi’s shirt and dips his fingers down under it. 

“i’m pretty confident i know more about what you want than some loser strangers do, hyung,” he says and then he’s knotting his fingers in the material of yoongi’s tshirt and twisting it up in his fist until the collar is straining. he pulls yoongi forward. “i think i know how to fuck you better than you’ve ever been fucked in your life, hyung. want me to show you?” 

yoongi doesn’t think, doesn’t pause, just pushes the rest of way forward and puts his mouth to taehyung’s. taehyung is grinning against his lips, yoongi can feel it, but then yoongi stretches his legs out behind taehyung, sits his full weight in taehyung’s lap and starts to move on top of taehyung’s still covered cock and taehyung isn’t smiling anymore because he’s holding yoongi down with both hands around his hips and rutting up against him, biting at yoongi’s bottom lip until yoongi gives in and opens up for him. 

when taehyung gets his tongue in yoongi’s mouth, yoongi groans low, low in his throat and maybe it’s because taehyung is kissing him teasingly, just barely letting him feel the soft touch of his tongue before it’s gone again and yoongi has to go chasing after it, has to tempt taehyung into kissing him back. but maybe, maybe it’s because taehyung is pushing his own pants down off his legs, lifting his hips up with yoongi still in his lap like he weighs nothing and then kicking them off and pulling yoongi down harder, letting him ride the thick line of his cock with nothing but his briefs between them, now. 

“what do you think, hyung? you wanna sit on this for me?” 

and then yoongi doesn’t care about games, doesn’t give a fuck about flirting anymore. he tears his shirt up over his head and goes straight for the buttons on taehyung’s, loses his patience after two and just tears it apart until the buttons pop off and fly everywhere. taehyung starts to laugh but stops abruptly when yoongi gets his hand cupped up around his pec and gets his mouth around taehyung’s nipple, sucks with just enough teeth that he knows it’ll bruise. 

he doesn’t stop until taehyung pulls him away, his hand fisted in yoongi’s hair. 

“bad hyung,” taehyung says, frowning at him and yoongi pouts and tries to get back at taehyung’s chest. “distracting me isn’t going to work.” 

yoongi doesn’t know how to tell taehyung that he hadn’t been trying to distract him. he’d been trying to distract himself, because he’s so hard he’s getting lightheaded and if taehyung doesn’t fuck him soon he’ll probably just clamp his thighs down around taehyung’s hips and hump him until he comes like that. 

thankfully, yoongi doesn’t have to say anything at all because taehyung is standing up, lifting yoongi with him with clear and absolutely horrifically hot ease and then turning them around, dumping yoongi onto his sheets on his back and going foraging for supplies. 

“underwear off, hyung. i can’t wait to get my fingers in you. you’re gonna look so pretty riding my hand,” taehyung says and yoongi swears and pushes his briefs down his legs like he’s being timed. he’s about to kick them off onto the floor but then taehyung is there, taking yoongi’s ankle in his hand and carefully pulling his underwear free of his foot and even that is terribly, wonderfully hot, yoongi thinks, because taehyung is helping him take his underwear off so they can have sex and nothing has ever been hotter than the concept of getting to have sex with taehyung. 

taehyung is pushing his knees apart and sitting on his heels between yoongi’s spread legs and yoongi isn’t sure that anything he’s accomplished in this life has earned him this distinct pleasure so maybe he’s cashing in on multiple past life heroics here but that’s okay, he’ll give up everything he’s got to finally, finally get fucked by taehyung. 

“ah, you’re so pretty here, hyung,” taehyung says, lifting yoongi’s thighs up over his own, “your little hole is so cute and pink,” he says and yoongi would have thought that a sentence like that would get whoever dared to say it to him punched in the face, so it’s to even his own surprise that he finds himself blushing instead. 

“aww, so adorable hyung,” taehyung says and yoongi wants to snap at him, wants to be offended, wants to be mad even but all he is is squirmy and embarrassed in a way that’s making his belly hot, makes him want to roll over onto his stomach and beg. 

stubborn to the very end, he doesn’t. he takes two fistfuls of taehyung’s sheets and holds on for dear life as taehyung fingers him open until he’s got yoongi humping the air and almost actually begging. 

every time taehyung gets close to his prostate he makes a face and says “oops,” because even with three of his fingers up inside yoongi and his thumb smoothing lube up over yoongi’s perineum he’s a fucking tease. yoongi swears at him, snaps his teeth and even straight up growls at one point but taehyung doesn’t relent and yoongi is secretly terribly glad, because he knows taehyung could wring several orgasms out of him with literally just his fingertips but yoongi came here tonight to get fucked and he will not be dissuaded or distracted from his goals. or, well. taehyung won’t be swayed or distracted from yoongi’s goals, it would seem. teamwork really does make the dream work. 

once he has yoongi loose and dripping for him, taehyung flops down on his back and folds his arms up behind his head, just stares yoongi down. 

“c’mon hyung. get yourself on it for me,” he says like he’s asking yoongi to pass him his phone and fuck him, honestly. 

yoongi gets on his knees over taehyung and holds himself open with one hand, holds taehyung’s cock steady with the other. 

and maybe taehyung hadn’t actually expected yoongi to do as he’s been told or maybe he just hadn’t thought this far ahead yet, but yoongi sees it in his face when his ultra confidence mode falters again for a second. 

yoongi grins. 

he settles back, sits down just hard enough to get the head of taehyung’s cock inside him. 

taehyung’s forehead creases up, his eyebrows drawn together and his mouth falling open around a low groan. 

“does that feel good, taehyung-ah?” yoongi asks him, as sweet as he can possibly be. 

the tone of his voice is what makes taehyung realize his mistake. his eyes snap to yoongi’s and yoongi’s grin goes sharp, gets deadly. 

“would you like more, tae?” yoongi asks and taehyung looks at him aghast, stares up at him in absolute betrayal. 

“hyung,” he says, pleading and whining already. “hyung you’re so mean. come on, please. i said please,” taehyung says and yoongi laughs at him. taehyung is the one that’s pouting now. 

yoongi gets his knees under him properly and sits back a little more, takes barely another inch of taehyung’s cock. 

“how’s that, tae? does hyung feel good inside? is this enough? is this all you want?” it’s helping yoongi hold onto his composure, slowing it down like this. it’s also driving taehyung fucking crazy and he sits up now, jostles yoongi who stubbornly makes sure that no more of taehyung’s cock slips into him. 

“please, hyung. _please_ ,” taehyung says and he’s flushed now, his cheeks pinked up and hot with it when he leans in to nuzzle against the side of yoongi’s face. “please. i’ll be good. i’ll be so good for you, hyung.” 

and he already is, really, so yoongi relents. he wraps an arm around the line of taehyung’s shoulders and lowers himself slowly until he’s sitting in taehyung’s lap, taehyung’s balls hot and sweat sticky against his ass. they groan together, taehyung’s mouth pressed right to yoongi’s ear so he hears it, so low, so good. 

yoongi stays still for a second, lets himself get used to the thick cock that’s all the way up inside him and gives taehyung an opportunity to gather himself again, because maybe yoongi really has no sense of self preservation at all. 

when he sits up again, just a little bit, just a couple of inches and then sits back down hard and fast, taehyung grabs him by his hips and digs his fingernails in. yoongi gasps, the bite of pain the sweetest kind of pleasure he’s ever known and then he’s gasping pretty much constantly because taehyung is holding him tight as he rides his cock, bouncing in taehyung’s lap. 

“so good. you feel so good, hyung. take my cock so well,” taehyung half snarls into the side of yoongi’s face and then he has one hand on the line of yoongi’s throat and yoongi’s next gasp becomes something more like a sob instead. 

taehyung puts his mouth to base of yoongi’s throat, kisses across the line of his collarbones and then his hand slides around to the back of yoongi’s neck and he’s sucking so hard at the thin skin of yoongi’s throat that it’s not so much as a kiss now as it is a bite. yoongi _keens_. 

“see hyung? i told you i know you better than anyone else you’ve let fuck you before,” taehyung barely hums the words. knows he doesn’t need to speak up because yoongi is straining to hear him. “i know just what you like, hyung. know you look at my hands and mouth and think about me leaving bruises all over your pretty pale skin just like this,” taehyung says and yoongi is nodding so hard and fast that it feels like his head is going to fall off, except it can’t because taehyung’s hand is at the back of his neck still, his broad palm hot at the top of yoongi’s spine and his teeth are closing around the hammering pulse in yoongi’s throat and when he laughs, low and dark against yoongi’s skin and then _sucks_ yoongi’s mouth falls open and he sits down hard on taehyung’s cock, comes so hard that it splashes up over both his and taehyung’s chests. 

“oh, hyung,” taehyung says, licking at the mark he just made, letting his teeth drag against it, the blunt pressure of it so good that yoongi’s dick jerks again, totally untouched between his and taehyung’s bellies. “made such a pretty little mess for me, sweet thing,” taehyung praises him and yoongi’s eyes sting. his whole body feels sensitive, shivery and shaking. 

and this, this is what he loves the most. 

“fuck me, taehyung,” he says and he doesn’t have to say it again, doesn’t have to explain himself or elaborate because taehyung really does know him best. 

he gently pushes yoongi down onto his back and lifts his legs, presses yoongi’s knees to his chest so he can get back at his hole. 

“you just wanna get used, huh hyung?” taehyung asks, but he’s not asking at all. “you love this, don’t you? all it takes is one orgasm and then you’re just mine to do whatever i want with, aren’t you?” 

yoongi would nod, would say ‘yes’, might even say ‘please’, but taehyung doesn’t give him the chance. 

“your pink little hole has gotten all dark for me, hyung. so hot around me. i fucked you sloppy, hyung, fucked your pretty ass open on my cock. do you think the others will thank me? maybe you should thank me, hyung.” 

yoongi’s breath stutters in his chest. 

and then the words stutter out of his mouth. 

“th - thank you, taehyung,” he says and god help him, he means it. 

taehyung grins at him, all teeth, so smug and all the fight has been fucked out of yoongi so he just closes his eyes and takes it, takes exactly what he’s always wanted from taehyung. 

“hey, eyes open. look at me, hyung,” taehyung says and when yoongi does as he says he finds that taehyung is leaning over him now, his face right there, his jaw clenched with the effort he’s putting into fucking yoongi. his hands are huge and hot on yoongi’s hips, his fingers digging in hard to leave bruises. it’s so much. it’s too much and that’s just right. 

“where do you want my come, hyung?” taehyung asks, grunts as he fucks yoongi hard enough to jostle him up the bed. 

it takes honest effort to not let his eyes roll up into his head, but yoongi persists. 

“on me. come on me, taehyung-ah,” he manages and then taehyung is pulling out and yoongi is only halfway hard again, his cock is pulsing almost painfully with too quick overstimulation but that doesn’t seem to matter because when taehyung gets up on his knees and strokes his cock between yoongi’s thighs, comes hot and wet all over yoongi’s belly, all over his cock and balls, yoongi’s cock spurts thick dribbles of come up onto his own stomach to add to it. 

“fuck,” taehyung says, teeth gritted and yoongi would agree if he wasn’t trying not to scream. 

“jesus fuck,” yoongi concludes eventually, when he can breathe again without yelling, when he can move without wincing. taehyung isn’t even there, still, he finds when he opens his eyes and maybe he has salvaged some small hint of his dignity after all. 

“see hyung? told you i could do it,” taehyung says when he comes back from the bathroom, towel in hand and his smug smirk firmly back in place. 

“fuck you,” yoongi says and taehyung laughs. 

“sure, hyung. just gimme like twenty minutes. fifteen if you keep talking dirty to me.” 

yoongi tries to roll over, means to bury his face in the sheets, but taehyung holds him still while he cleans him up. all yoongi can do is pout and grumble. 

“you are very, very cute,” taehyung decides and then he boops yoongi on the nose. 

“you just fucked me to two untouched orgasms. don’t you fucking dare boop my nose you smug little fucker,” yoongi says but there’s not much heat to it, all things considered. taehyung is helping him into a pair of his pajamas. he just wants to sleep. 

“okay hyung,” taehyung agrees easily and then he tucks yoongi up in his sheets next to him. 

and leans over to ruffle his hair. 

“i swear to god i’ll fucking kill you,” yoongi mumbles but he’s halfway to sleep already so he can’t really give it his all. 

“i know hyung. scary hyung. sweet little pretty hyung,” taehyung says and then maybe he says some more but yoongi doesn’t hear it because he’s asleep. 

the next morning, yoongi wakes up disorientated and sore in the good way, sensitive and aching a little, hurting pleasantly in all the fun places. 

taehyung’s head is all that’s visible above the covers, the tuft of his hair and his arm, on top of the covers and slung across yoongi’s chest. 

even his fucking forearms are hot. 

yoongi had kind of hoped that getting to fuck him would give him some kind of immunization against his hotness, honestly. 

he folds the covers back to check. 

and finds that taehyung is just as hot as ever. 

hotter, maybe because now yoongi knows what he looks like when he comes. 

“fuck,” yoongi decides and taehyung stirs. 

“yes please,” taehyung says and yoongi sighs. 

and then ducks beneath the covers to get his hands on as much of taehyung’s hotness as he can reach. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

on his way back to his own room, yoongi runs into hoseok in the corridor. 

“eyyyy. nice!” hoseok says, smile sunshine bright already and only going brighter somehow when he spots the marks on yoongi’s neck. 

“fuck off,” yoongi says and then he turns his back to hoseok so he can’t see yoongi blushing. 

“so getting fucked doesn’t make him any more of a morning person. noted,” seokjin says from the doorway to his room and yoongi takes off for his own room at a run. 

well. a quick shuffle, maybe. 

“it does make him gotta go fast, though,” is the last thing yoongi hears jungkook muse before he slams his door shut. 

they’re such idiots, every single last one of them. 

yoongi can’t believe he’s going to fuck them all. 

he doesn’t have to. 

but god (and taehyung) help him, he’s going to. 

does that count as having the forces of both good and evil on his side? 

yoongi hopes so, because he could use all the help he can get. 

it’s not going to be easy. it’s definitely going to be messy, if they do it right. 

but yoongi is determined. 

yoongi’s going to plan an orgy. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title for this chapter is from a very wonderful song called 'short kings anthem' by blackbear & tiny meat gang.


	5. taehyung/namjoon - earn another sticker superstar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “uh, no. i, um,” the worst part is, taehyung doesn’t even laugh at him or in any other way acknowledge that he’s a goddamn mess. he just sits there, very patiently and waits for namjoon to finish his sentence. “i just came to tell you that i’m next.” he gets it out in a quick rush. and then realizes he hasn’t exactly been clear. “for fucking. to be exact. like … you know how you’ve already had sex with hoseok and jungkook and yoongi? well, that. i’m next. to be had. by you. if that’s okay. if you’re not busy. and if you want to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so, so so so very late and i'm really sorry about that. 
> 
> my sister and i both got corona virus and i'm fine now, i'm not infected anymore but she still is and we live together so i both have to take care of her and be super careful about doing that. 
> 
> quarantine is rough af as a way of life and i'm mindful of that, so i want to be able to post to give anyone who might need or want it that small joy at least. it definitely won't be this long between updates again unless something totally unimaginable happens. and like WHO KNOWS @ right now, but also it better fucking not because i hav had enuf etc. etc. 
> 
> i hope you're all doing okay and being kind to yourselves in these strange and trying times. ♥ 
> 
> also this chapter is 29k so ... you're welcome / i'm sorry? i'm not sure which is most appropriate so decide for yourself depending on how you feel. :D?

it takes a second, after he wakes up, for namjoon to remember why today feels significant. 

he wriggles down into his sheets and stretches his arms up over his head and yawns and knuckles the sleep out of the corners of his eyes and lets his thoughts tick slowly up into their usual productive rhythm. it takes a while for him to come online in the mornings and that’s especially true today because he’d been up working late into the night. it was already almost morning by the time he was going to bed, so it’s early afternoon now and the apartment is quiet in that way it gets when anyone who had plans for the day has already left for them and everyone else is lazing around in their rooms, napping or working or gaming or reading. 

going as still as he can and straining to hear, namjoon thinks he can pick up the furious clack of someone’s keyboard; seokjin or jungkook gaming. there’s music playing somewhere, something soft and lilting so it’s probably taehyung. 

taehyung. 

ah. now namjoon remembers what’s special about today. 

last night, namjoon had forced himself to work until he was too exhausted to think because even though they’d all come home pretty tired already after an unexpectedly drawn out practice, namjoon had showered and changed into his comfy sweats and sat down on his bed to smooth his moisturiser on and realized, with an intensely startling jolt that thanks to his room and taehyung’s sharing a wall, he could hear taehyung and yoongi fucking. 

the layout of their apartment hasn’t changed recently. namjoon and taehyung’s rooms have always shared a wall and they’ve had plenty of semi-awkward morning afters, the worst part of them being how they hadn’t even spent the night before together; had tried not to listen to each other fuck other people instead. namjoon is pretty sure that he’s always gotten the shorter end of that particular stick. taehyung doesn’t bring people back often, but when he does, it’s an experience. it’s a surround sound, second hand experience of everything namjoon wanted but couldn’t have. so it’s been awkward mostly only because taehyung apologizes sometimes; not often and never at length, but always giving namjoon way too much space to fill, way too many chances to say ‘you wouldn’t have to be sorry if you’d just take me to your room and let me be the one that makes you feel good.’ 

and namjoon doesn’t, he hasn’t, because he’d decided that he wanted to fuck every member of this group the same day he’d met them, in most cases, but in the very early days there was a longstanding, too long running joke about how namjoon was the horniest out of all of them and that had kind of given him pause. after some unscheduled and unnecessarily deep soul searching, namjoon had been pretty happy to conclude that no, he wasn’t any more of a raging sex fiend than the rest of them, it was actually just that he made roughly zero effort to be obtuse about it whereas the rest of them had like understood decorum and practised appropriate levels of self disclosure or whatever. he’d been able to let go of the fearful embarrassment he’d found himself suffocating in for a week or so back then and he’d even started trying to emmulate the efforts the rest of them made to hide both how often he thought about sex in general and how much he wanted to fuck them specifically. as with most things, practice made it easier and time made him better at it, but at some point he’d crossed a line he hadn’t seen at the time because now he found himself out on the other side of simple decorum with no idea how to get back to the place where it was obvious to everyone that he was into all of them and down to fuck like always. which sucked, because it seemed like they’ve all decided to camp out in that territory when they’d been the ones to unknowingly, unthinkingly drive him out of there in the first place. and now here they all are, edging their way back there. 

although, in taehyung’s case he seems to have been born there. and yoongi is making for it at a dead run. the rest of them, though, are following with too careful, steady steps and if there are two things namjoon doesn’t know how to be it’s careful and steady. when it’s something he’s invested in, he gives it his all right off the bat. he doesn’t know how to approach the things he’s truly passionate about any other way. 

and so now he finds himself trying to unlearn all the ways he taught himself to make his desires small, to keep what he wanted under wraps and pushed down far enough to be unseen, to stay that way. 

he’s not sure if it’s helping his process or not that he’s trying to do this to the soundtrack of his bandmates getting fucked one by one by taehyung. 

last night he’d nearly broken the sound barrier racing to his desk to grab his headphones and jam them on as quickly as he possibly could and after only a solid fifteen minutes of staring blankly out the window and gritting his teeth so hard it made his eyes water, he’d eventually been able to force his brain to focus on something that wasn’t the sounds taehyung was wringing out of yoongi. 

it was infinitely different (read: way more fucking difficult) to find himself in possession of the knowledge that taehyung was fucking someone else when it wasn’t a random stranger, but namjoon’s best friend. and someone else namjoon was heavily, whole-heartedly invested in fucking himself. 

but namjoon had soldiered on and even managed to turn his as yet unresolved sexual frustrations into the rough sketch of a track he could already hear jimin and seokjin’s harmonies for and by the time he’d fallen into bed the sounds from next door had ceased and namjoon had slipped into a still residually riled up sleep that featured faint, fog thicked impressions of familiar hands on his body and the whispered brush of promises he was sure he could still hear when he woke up this morning. 

and just like that, today had arrived. 

and it was significant because it was the day after taehyung had let yoongi into his bed. 

it was special, because it was only a matter of days now, before namjoon was next. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

namjoon doesn’t have anything to do today. which is to say he has way too much to do today, but nothing official, nothing he’s going to get raked over the coals for not getting to, if it comes to that. 

and that is a luxury in and of itself so he takes his time in the shower and then takes even more time after; slowly, methodically rubbing his whole body down with the really nice and absurdly expensive body butter jimin got him the last time he went traveling. it’s rosehip and mango scented and namjoon is still breathing in deep breaths of it when he changes his sheets and then settles down over them to let it dry in. 

he’s maybe about to fall back asleep when there’s a soft knock on his bedroom door. 

“yeah?” he mostly grunts, eyes still closed and the thought of getting up and getting properly dressed still languishing in the conceptual stage. 

the handle turns carefully, slow and quiet like whoever it is is afraid he’s still sleeping. 

“oh, you’re awake,” seokjin says softly and namjoon smiles without opening his eyes. the rest of the group can be easily split into two categories: those who don’t know how to be quiet and those who don’t try to be but seokjin is the only one who both thinks to be mindful of others and can usually successfully pull it off, too. it’s cute. it’s sweet. 

when namjoon doesn’t say anything, seokjin steps inside and closes the door behind himself. namjoon listens to him pad barefoot across the carpet and it’s not new that something in his belly twists pleasantly when he feels seokjin crawl across his bed to get close to him, but it’s new to let himself register it. it’s a little bit scary, the way most new things are, but namjoon finds that he likes it. 

“good morning, hyung,” he says, tilting his face further into the sun that’s slanted across his sheets in a warm, generous spill of light. if that also just happens to mean he’s turning in seokjin’s direction, it’s no coincidence. 

a single finger trails down the side of his face, starting just below his hairline and only falling away when it dips below the line of his jaw. seokjin hums like he’s contemplating something, namjoon himself maybe and namjoon loves being like this with seokjin. he loves having to wait for seokjin, never really knowing what he’s going to say or do and not being in any position to dictate either of those things when they’re alone like this. out there in the world namjoon is seokjin’s leader but here in their private lives, when they’re as close to their true selves as they ever get to come, seokjin is namjoon’s hyung. and namjoon just wants to be seokjin’s baby. 

“why do you smell so good?” seokjin wants to know. he’s nosing at namjoon’s neck now and namjoon wants to roll over onto his belly, wants to strip the rest of the way naked and show every little bit of himself to seokjin. he wants to be something seokjin wants to look at; wants to touch and taste and feel. 

“body butter. jimin,” namjoon manages, barely, but seokjin is well versed in filling in namjoon’s gaps by now so he hums again, this time in understanding. 

“that adds up.” he says. “you smell amazing. you look …” he trails off and if namjoon was braver he’d open his eyes then, he’d figure out what seokjin was going to say by searching for it on his face but he’s not quite that brave, not yet, so he screws his eyes shut just that much harder and sucks at the inside of his lip and maybe he lifts his chin, just a little, but he waits for seokjin to go on. 

“is -” seokjin pauses then, after only saying one word more. it’s enough for namjoon to hear that he’s unsure about what he’s about to say and that’s enough to let him know that this conversation has gotten serious, even if it maybe didn’t start out that way. 

he opens his eyes and looks at seokjin and as usual, his breath catches when he sees for the first time in a while, when ‘a while’ could mean anything from two days to four seconds, depending on how he decides to look at namjoon and how willing namjoon is, in that moment, to admit to himself that he’s in love with seokjin. 

right now, in this moment, seokjin is lying next to namjoon, propped up on his side with one elbow underneath himself. he’s wearing a way too big tshirt that namjoon thinks is hoseok’s and a pair of jeans that are so distressed that they’re more gaps than actual fabric and namjoon is himself distressed by that fact. seokjin doesn’t have any make up on and his hair is soft and unstyled and as usual, he’s the most beautiful person namjoon has ever seen. he’s not looking directly at namjoon. he’s looking down at where his hand is maybe an inch from namjoon’s, both of their pinkies stretched out at an angle against the sheets like their bodies sense each other and are drawn toward one another by pure instinct. 

“is what we’re doing okay?” seokjin asks, still not making eye contact and namjoon breathes something like a sigh of relief. if seokjin is asking, he already knows the answer. if his worries are phrased as a question and brought to namjoon specifically, he knows what namjoon is going to say and he’s asking because that’s what he wants to hear. 

“nothing is decided, hyung,” namjoon says, reassuring himself by saying it too. “but we’re all adults. we all understand well enough by now what this means.” what they mean to each other, is what he really means. “if it gets messy we’ll fix it the same way we’ve always been able to fix everything else. we’ll talk about it.” 

seokjin doesn’t say anything, which means he doesn’t have anything to say. he still isn’t looking at namjoon, though, so there must be something more he needs to hear. 

“we’ve worked through so many things together, so many of them terrible,” namjoon continues, “and we made it every time, didn’t we? this will be different because this is something special. this is something good. we can do this. we deserve to have this,” namjoon says and he hadn’t actually thought about it that way before so it catches him off guard when it comes out, catches in his throat because it’s so big, it’s huge how much he wants this. how relieved he is to finally be able to let himself want it and seek it. have it, at last. 

seokjin lifts his gaze to namjoon’s and his eyes are huge, the emotion in them endless and naked and brimming over with hope, with happiness. 

namjoon has no choice but to roll over into him, to wrap himself around seokjin every single way he can, touching him everywhere he can reach. seokjin laughs, this deep and totally breathless giggle that makes namjoon’s chest feel light, makes his hands tingle like he’s got magic in his fingers. he has one arm around seokjin’s waist and the other is wound up over his shoulder, his palm on the back of seokjin’s neck and his fingers in his hair and this must be what jungkook had been talking about, when he’d cupped namjoon’s face in his hands and proudly told him with shining eyes that he was holding the whole world. 

grinning at him broadly, blindingly bright now, seokjin is supple in his hands, letting namjoon roll him over onto his back so he can sprawl all over him, mostly on top of him. it’s only after namjoon settles and goes still that seokjin moves, tugging his arms out from underneath namjoon’s body weight and hooking them both up over his shoulders, crossing them at namjoon’s bare back. his hands are warm on namjoon’s skin and he’s going to smell like the body butter namjoon is covered in, after this. that thought makes namjoon want to take all of seokjin’s clothes off and touch him everywhere. but then again, most thoughts make namjoon want to do that. 

“are you happy, hyung?” namjoon has to ask, because like seokjin, he already knows the answer but he wants to hear it. needs to hear seokjin say it. he lifts himself up so his weight is on his elbows, on either side of seokjin’s face. like this, he can put his hands in seokjin’s hair and push it back out of his face so he can see seokjin’s answer, too. 

“i’m very happy, joon-ah,” seokjin says, sounding proud of that fact and namjoon is delighted by that tone of his voice, is himself proud of seokjin for letting himself feel that way about this. he dips down to drag the neckline of seokjin’s (hoseok’s) tshirt down with his nose and then he fits his mouth to the cradle he has bared between seokjin’s collarbones. seokjin lets him stay there for a beat, lets it drag out into a full bar and then he reaches for namjoon’s face and takes it in his hands, lifts it so he can press a kiss high on the apples of namjoon’s cheeks. he turns namjoon’s face a little so he can speak into his ear. “i think right now, this moment, is the happiest i’ve ever been,” he says, soft and sincere with his voice trembling out of him and namjoon can’t for one second longer cope with having this sweet, incredibly beautiful man that he loves underneath him, spread out on his back in namjoon’s sun warm sheets and crooning to namjoon about how happy he is to be here in his arms. 

namjoon has to drag his cheek up over the sharp, lovely line of seokin’s jaw to get their mouths pressed together and he’s glad for it, thankful for all the ways and places he gets to touch. 

he’s always thought seokjin’s mouth would be incredible to kiss, his lips so full and lush, so much softer than he’d even imagined when he finds himself here in this moment, finally kissing his hyung. it feels sweetly juvenile to just press their lips together, that alone such a lovely thing that namjoon could spend an eternity going no further, needing no more. but then seokjin’s pout parts and he makes the prettiest sound namjoon has ever heard, low in the back of his throat and needy and impatient and namjoon’s head swims with it, every part of him burns for it. seokjin’s hand lifts up into namjoon’s hair and he gets a fistful of it, tugs gently to get their mouths slanted better against one another and namjoon doesn’t have to think when he feels the warm press of seokjin’s tongue at his bottom lip, doesn’t have to ever think again if the alternative is having seokjin’s mouth open under his, his bottom lip soft and fat like ripe fruit between namjoon’s teeth. when namjoon sucks at it seokjin’s teeth clack together hard enough that namjoon hears it and then everything gets very briefly disorientating for a second and when namjoon blinks to clear his vision he’s the one on his back and seokjin is swinging a leg across his hips to climb up onto him. 

seokjin leans back down instantly, tips namjoon’s chin up into another kiss or just the continuation of the first one maybe and his mouth is so hot and he looks so good, sits so pretty astride namjoon and namjoon can’t deal with any of this, he’s ready for it and god, how he has wanted it, but it’s so, so very much. 

“wait,” he gasps, wanting to speak but not able to make himself stop kissing seokjin, scrambling his own brains with how he just asked seokjin to wait but he’s still the one who whines and pouts when seokjin actually does. seokjin smiles at him, so fucking _fond_ and oh, oh right. that was what he needed to say. 

“i’m in love with you, hyung,” namjoon says, quick and clear because that’s how it feels to him; it’s not complicated, it’s not messy, it doesn’t confuse or pain or frustrate him. even when he didn’t feel like he could act on it, he didn’t wish he felt differently. “i love getting to love you, hyung,” he tells seokjin, because he loves what they do, but getting to do it together is what makes it so rewarding, so fulfilling and important and fun. 

seokjin stares at him, his face frozen in an expression that’s something like surprise. he sits back, his butt between namjoon’s hips, not trying to balance onto his knees, letting namjoon take his full weight. he scrubs both hands up over his face and when they fall away again his expression has cracked into something very young and almost lost. 

“'joon-ah,” he says, breathing the word out on an exhale, “you can’t be like this.” 

namjoon blinks up at him. 

“you can’t just be out here in the world like this. underneath me, like this. do you know how hard it is for me to do things that aren’t kissing you always? what do you know of the internal war that rages within me every time you wear shorts?” it’s wildly dramatic, in true seokjin fashion and namjoon slowly feels his body untense, settles in to watch seokjin perform. seokjin folds his arms across his chest and tries to glare down at namjoon and namjoon knows that if seokjin wasn’t in love with him too, it would be a completely convincing and compelling performance. “first you decide to be born, just unleash yourself on this world like the rest of us are in any way prepared for you. and then you join big hit and make yourself a home for all of us, welcome us in one by one,” seokjin’s voice cracks on the word ‘home’ and his ability to stay in character seems to be shaking. namjoon is, too. “you take responsibility for all of us, you _love_ us and work so hard for us and that’s already too much, joon-ah, but now you expect me to able to handle this? you’re in love with me? when i’ve been in love with you for years?” his eyes are huge again and shining, wet with unshed tears now. “terrible,” he decides. “you’re a terrible dongsaeng and i want to spend the whole rest of my life with you and the rest of us, because this is the best thing i never thought big enough to imagine and i’m going to love you forever. i’m always going to take such good care of you, joon-ah.” 

namjoon brings his knees up behind seokjin, knowing him well enough to prepare in advance for how he slumps when he’s finished speaking, the emotion of it all taking so much out of him that his body gets weak after the release of it. he leans back against namjoon’s thighs and namjoon has to reach out and push his hands up underneath seokjin’s tshirt, get his hands on bare skin, on the solid, slight curve of his waist. 

“kiss me again, hyung,” namjoon says, looking up at seokjin from underneath his eyelashes. “take care of me now, hyung,” he implores and seokjin shakes his head but complies. he’s always tried to take care of namjoon, maybe even more than he’s always been determined to take care of the rest of them. in a lot of ways, namjoon won’t let him. but this way, he can and he will. when seokjin leans down, namjoon meets him halfway. when he drops his head back onto his pillow, he knows seokjin will follow him down. 

_/_/_/

namjoon is about six seconds from coming when another knock on the door interrupts them. 

they have just enough time for seokjin to pull his hand out of namjoon’s boxers and throw himself off him to lie down next to him, seemingly innocently, before the door is pushed open. yoongi doesn’t wait for a response before entering and he’s already speaking and halfway across the room before he looks up and sees them. whatever he was saying goes unfinished and his mouth hangs open in a way that should be unattractive, but isn’t, because it’s yoongi. 

after a second of blank, silent staring, he snorts and his eyes narrow back into his usual resting expression. 

“you really think two feet of incredibly conspicuous space is gonna do anything to combat the fact that you’re both hard right now? you’re intelligent men and you’ve both got really big dicks, come on. get it together,” he says like he’s genuinely disappointed in them and namjoon can’t figure out if it’s because they’re stupid or because they stopped humping each other. the two of those things kind of go hand in hand anyway, namjoon decides. would a smart man have let seokjin get this far away from him? absolutely not. namjoon is genuinely ashamed of himself. 

seokjin just laughs but it sounds harsh and strained and namjoon knows the feeling. he is immensely relieved when yoongi approaches the bed and decides to crawl to lounge between seokjin’s spread legs because he pretty often deigns to use one of them as a throne and namjoon is usually honoured to be chosen but he doesn’t think he could handle it, right now. 

“so,” yoongi says, with his arms up on seokjin’s knees and his back way too close to seokjin’s dick for comfort if the panicked expression on seokjin’s face is any indication, “i actually came here to make sure you weren’t gonna get pointlessly mad at me for trying to incite whatever the long term relationship version of an orgy is, but i’m guessing from this -” he waves a hand between the two of them, pausing to tilt his head when his gaze lands on namjoon’s dick, still mostly hard and tenting his boxers. his tongue peeks out to wet his bottom lip and namjoon has to fight the urge to cover his dick protectively, “that that concern is unnecessary?” 

namjoon folds his arms up behind his head and rolls his eyes. 

“what does it say about us that i’m proud of you for not pretending that you’d pause in your orgy planning even if i did have a problem with it, hyung?” namjoon asks and yoongi shrugs his shoulders. seokjin has his hand mostly in his own mouth, now, biting down on his knuckles. 

“in my defense, if the both of you tell me not to do something, that mostly really does make me rethink it?” yoongi looks between namjoon and seokjin with his expression as close to bare as it ever gets. he’s not trying to project anything, not forcing himself to hide what he’s feeling either. it’s an incredibly rare look from him and it still absolutely floors namjoon that someone as brilliant as min yoongi respects him so much. he pretty often doesn’t know what to do with the way when he’s with yoongi and seokjin he feels the same way he does with hoseok - like they’re equals, somehow, even though they’re not really, couldn’t ever be by a very generous handful of standards. 

that’s what makes them work, though - all of them, not just this particular small cell of them. externally held, arbitrarily imposed standards mean absolutely fucking nothing to them, not when they’re intended to keep them apart or wielded to try and hold them down. 

“that makes me feel oddly emotional,” seokjin says, doing that thing he does where he pretends to be surprised to find himself overwhelmed by an emotion. “like …” he sounds genuinely concerned, now, “i might cry?” 

yoongi twists around instantly, his hands pushing seokjin’s legs down flat against the bed so he can crawl up over him, settling when he’s lying stretched out on top of seokjin. 

“nooo don’t cry, hyung, you’re so sexy,” he says, totally deadpan and it would be hilarious, coming from yoongi of all people, if he didn’t say it with his face like a bare inch from seokjin’s because that just makes it unbearably hot instead. namjoon’s pretty sure they’re about to kiss. if they don’t, he’s going to kiss both of them. someone has to do the right thing, here. 

“why did i get nothing but disrespectful dongsaengs?” seokjin asks but the heat in the statement falls flat for how he can’t look away from yoongi’s mouth when he says it. “would it kill you to revere and worship me? just a little bit?” 

yoongi lifts a hand, presses the pad of his index finger to the soft center of seokjin’s bottom lip, still kiss swollen from namjoon’s teeth and tongue and presses, just hard enough to make seokjin gasp quietly. 

“i don’t know what ‘revere’ means, hyung, but i think i could handle a little worshipping,” he says, low and rough against seokjin’s mouth and then he leans up into it and they’re kissing. seokjin’s hands push up under the back of yoongi’s tshirt and namjoon is so jealous, he wants to touch yoongi like that, he wants to lie on top of seokjin and kiss him, but he’s also entirely fine, he finds, with getting to lie next to them and watch them kiss each other. 

seokjin’s mouth feels utterly fucking lovely but it looks even better somehow, the way yoongi’s lips push and drag against seokjin’s making it clear how plush they are. their noses are fitted together, yoongi’s little button nose nudging into seokjin’s cheek with how close he’s pushing and seokjin’s bottom lip bounces wetly against his chin when yoongi moves in to suck at his tongue. it’s painfully, overwhelmingly hot to watch and namjoon is thinking very seriously about pushing his own hand down into his boxers when he finds it grabbed and pulled away before he can. yoongi has his fingers banded right around namjoon’s wrist and he’s not being gentle, he has his eyes closed and namjoon catches a glimpse of his tongue being pushed into seokjin’s mouth but he’s grabbing at namjoon’s wrist so hard it almost, almost hurts and oh, namjoon is really into the idea of yoongi hurting him. 

he’s really into anything that involves yoongi, he realizes, when yoongi slants his eyes open and looks at him, his other hand tilting seokjin’s chin so he can keep kissing him and still see namjoon at the same time. maybe namjoon doesn’t need to get a hand around himself. maybe just watching yoongi watch him while his mouth makes hot, wet sounds with seokjin’s is in fact more than enough to make namjoon come. he’d be down to find out, he decides, but then yoongi tugs once at his wrist and then his mouth is lifting away from seokjin’s. seokjin blinks up at yoongi, dazed for a second, but he quickly follows yoongi’s gaze to where it’s trained on namjoon. seokjin’s chest is rising and falling under deep breaths and yoongi is licking someone’s spit off his own bottom lip and they’re both looking at namjoon like they want to eat him. 

namjoon gulps. 

and then gulps again when both seokjin and yoongi watch the line of his throat work when he swallows. 

when yoongi moves off seokjin to crawl across the space between them to get to namjoon, seokjin’s hands are steadying at his bicep, lift his knee to help. 

and then yoongi is on his hands and knees, leaning down over namjoon and looking at him with dark, serious eyes, his cheeks flushed and his voice rough when he asks “can i kiss you, joon-ah? please can i - i really want to, let hyung - ” it doesn’t matter what he’s going to ask namjoon to let his hyung do to him, because the answer is going to be the same no matter what it is. he grabs a handful of yoongi’s shirt and yanks him in, pulls him down and his mouth is _hot_ from kissing seokjin and god that’s so hot to think about, that was so hot to watch and yoongi is himself this tiny little blisteringly hot genius and namjoon has wanted to kiss him for so long that he isn’t even embarrassed when he sobs at the first touch of yoongi’s mouth to his. 

yoongi is breathing hard against namjoon’s cheek and he’s moving, something happening that namjoon can’t see because his eyes slip shut the second yoongi’s lips part for him and he has to roll up onto one shoulder to keep kissing yoongi but that’s okay because when he breaks away to catch his breath he sees that seokjin has manhandled yoongi onto his side in between the two of them. seokjin is curled up behind yoongi, has pulled the neckline of his shirt aside to press his mouth to yoongi’s bared shoulder and he’s reaching across yoongi to let his hand rest on the curve of namjoon’s waist. 

when yoongi takes stock of their positions, he puts his open mouth to the pillow next to namjoon’s head and sinks his teeth into it, groaning long and low. 

“this is not the kim sandwich i had prepared myself to be in the middle of,” he says after a moment and seokjin laughs softly against the back of his neck. 

“and yet it was entirely your own doing.” he reminds yoongi. “no one made you wiggle in between namjoon and i. i was perfectly happy with the arrangement we had going, weren’t you, joon-ah?” 

namjoon’s brain is still trying to catch up with what just happened. there was maybe something he had intended to say but his thoughts are snagged on yoongi’s mention of a ‘kim sandwich’ that isn’t this one. 

“if taehyung was here too, would that make you the filling in kimbap?” namjoon asks, accidentally out loud. 

seokjin bursts into a peal of giggles so infectious that namjoon and yoongi end up laughing with him, even though namjoon is wrinkling his nose in horror at his own terrible joke and yoongi is frowning like he’s in actual pain. 

“oh that’s awful, that’s so completely terrible, you’ve been hanging out with hyung too much,” yoongi says and seokjin leans in to bite him hard on the ear. 

“excuse you, yoongichi, i only rub off on our namjoon in the good ways. i was actually about to rub off on him in the best way when you so kindly interrupted us.” 

“i hate you both,” yoongi decides, bringing his hands up to his face to cover it. “you’re the worst of the kims, i’m going back to taehyung’s room.” 

seokjin hugs yoongi around the middle and leans in to rest his chin on yoongi’s shoulder. 

“oh, that’s right. you didn’t sleep in your own bed last night, you little harlot,” seokjin remarks idly, like he had any easier a time forgetting what was going on in taehyung’s room last night than namjoon or the rest of them had. “how was that? do i need to be more gentle with you?” he hums and goes to unlock his arms from around yoongi’s waist, but yoongi stops him. 

“you don’t need to be gentle with me, hyung,” he says, seeming to consider something before he speaks again, “actually, i’d like it if you weren’t gentle with me at all.” 

seokjin’s eyes go wide, just for a second, even as yoongi’s eyes become lidded in something as close to almost-embarrassment as namjoon has ever seen him get. 

seokjin recovers quickly. 

“i see how it is. you get up close and personal with kim taehyung and now all of a sudden you’re a deviant. i knew that boy’s diabolical nature wasn’t limited to him looking like that. what has that little monster awoken in you, my sweet yoongi? how can we help you through this?” 

yoongi snorts and wraps seokjin’s arms tighter around his middle, pulling him in closer so they’re properly pressed together without yoongi having to move back away from namjoon. 

“seriously, though,” namjoon has to interrupt, “how was it? is there anything jin-hyung and i should know? anything we need to brace ourselves for?” 

nothing yoongi could say would surprise namjoon. not one of them knows how to handle taehyung. any spark notes they can get might just save them. 

yoongi hums softly and seems to think about it. his cheeks pink up and namjoon can’t say he’s shocked when he wriggles in place and that gives namjoon ample opportunity to feel yoongi’s dick jerk where it’s pressed against namjoon’s stomach. 

“that good?” namjoon asks but he doesn’t need to, because he knows - he _knows_ that getting to fuck taehyung is going to be lifechanging. god, he’s so excited. 

“hey, which of us is up next, by the way?” seokjin asks and oh, right. namjoon hadn’t even thought about that yet. 

“why do you assume it’s one of us? there’s still jimin, too,” namjoon says but he gets why both yoongi and seokjin give him a significant look. he doesn’t even know if the rest of them know that taehyung and jimin have never touched each other, before. well, hoseok knows, but namjoon doesn’t know for sure that anyone else knows. even if they don’t, even if jimin wasn’t loudly broadcasting strange energy about this, none of them could claim not to know that jimin has to be the final part of this. for taehyung and for jimin. and if it’s what they need, it’s what the rest of them want. 

“fine,” namjoon admits. “want to rock, paper, scissors for it?” 

“why do i kind of want to watch the two of you wrestle for the honour of getting at taehyung next?” yoongi murmurs, seemingly talking to himself. he speaks up then, though. “is it just me that finds it hot how he’s going through us all one by one? why does that make me feel like i’m part of some kind of ritualistic sacrifice that i’m completely willing to participate in?” 

seokjin rubs his broad hand up over the bruises taehyung has left scattered across the thin skin of yoongi’s throat and seeing the way yoongi’s eyes flutter closed at the touch does something to namjoon that he can’t explain. he’s close to pulling the leader card on seokjin for the first time in the history of bangtan, that’s how badly he wants to get to touch taehyung, even when he’s already lying here touching yoongi and seokjin. how that makes sense, namjoon has no clue. 

“well, it’s because he’s a demon,” seokjin says easily, in response to both yoongi’s question and, unknowingly, namjoon’s thoughts. “normal people don’t look like that. real human beings don’t act like that. he’s a demon. he has to be.” 

“uh, you do know the whole world routinely loses its collective mind over how hot you are, right? like the nickname has to have been some sort of a clue, hyung,” yoongi muses and seokjin nods easily. 

“sure, i’m otherworldly. ethereally good looking and all that. that’s not news. but mine is a passive sort of beauty. i’m to be beheld. people want to build shrines to my beauty. taehyung’s beauty is a full visual assault. i’m pretty sure looking at him makes most people want to burn a building down. that’s the difference.” 

“arson is the difference between you and taehyung?” yoongi asks, incredulous, trying to twist in seokjin’s arms to look back at him properly, but seokjin holds him tight, keeps him still. 

“'joon-ah, if i said you could sleep with taehyung right now but you had to wipe your harddrive to do it, what would you say?” seokjin asks, pointedly. 

namjoon thinks about it. and then starts to sweat. his harddrive has all their material on it, everything from both his studio computer and his personal laptop. it’s got all of his work and a lot of really important, completely irreplaceable versions of yoongi’s and hoseok’s, too. sometimes namjoon wakes up in the middle of the night with a scream still in his throat from dreams about losing it. he makes jungkook carry it when they’re traveling. it’s the most important, most precious thing in his possession. 

“well?” seokjin presses and namjoon sighs. 

“i’d do it,” he admits, feeling defeated only because he knows well how completely true it is. 

“kim namjoon!” yoongi says, scandalized, but quickly shutting his mouth when seokjin flicks him hard right over a particularly deep and lovely bruise. 

“judgement from people who have already gotten to first hand sample the carnal delights that await the rest of us in taehyung’s lair will not be heard or accepted by this court,” seokjin says, sternly. it’s hot. namjoon kind of wants to roll over and ask seokjin to spank him. 

“can i ask a question, then?” yoongi demands and seokjin sighs but inclines his head, albeit beleagueredly.

“i put the same question to you, but swap out taehyung for seokjin-hyung,” yoongi asks, rapid fire quick and namjoon falls right into his trap. he’d make a great lawyer. he’d be great at anything he wanted to do, honestly. namjoon has so much professional respect for him that he almost feels bad for all the depraved things he wants to do to him personally. 

“same answer,” namjoon says easily, not even needing to think about it. 

yoongi grins, gummy and smug and seokjin, stupidly, blushes. 

“that is so sweet, joon-ah. you want to fuck me that badly? come here,” seokjin crooks a finger at namjoon, “come over here, let hyung show you how sweet that is, you lovely little thing.” 

and probably, he’s kidding. on most levels, namjoon knows that. but on another, far louder level, namjoon’s super hot hyung just beckoned for him and called him ‘lovely’ and ‘little’, so namjoon is definitely about to fully squish yoongi into his bed in his frantic efforts to get to seokjin until yoongi, maybe sensing his own impending doom, brings both hands up and shoves hard at namjoon’s chest, pushing him clean off his own bed instead. 

“ow,” namjoon says, rubbing his butt and glaring at yoongi from the floor, turning the glare on seokjin too when he fails to fully hide his laughing face in yoongi’s shoulder. 

“sorry, 'joon-ah, but you got this very intense look on your face. i was afraid you were straying into arson territory because of this fallen angel that’s treating me like his own personal plushie. i had to save you from yourself,” it would almost be convincing, if yoongi didn’t look entirely content to be cuddled up in seokjin’s arms. “plus, i really had to save you from taehyung’s wrath. he’s got dibs, remember?” 

and that, actually, is a good point. 

and also one that yoongi is not alone in finding strangely very hot. 

“you can go next, if that’ll make you feel better,” seokjin offers, face all innocent and sweet like his hand hasn’t just slipped beneath the waistband of yoongi’s jeans. 

but that can’t really be namjoon’s primary concern right now. in the grander scheme of things, namjoon needs to prioritise here. 

and priority one remains the same: fuck taehyung. 

“that would make me feel better, thank you, hyung,” namjoon says and he doesn’t even mind that both yoongi and seokjin roll their eyes. 

namjoon is going to fuck taehyung today; nothing and no one can bring him down. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

eventually, namjoon’s rumbling stomach reminds him that he hasn’t eaten breakfast or anything else yet today, so he leaves seokjin and yoongi making out on his bed to go find some food in the kitchen. 

he’s pulling a sweater on when he opens his bedroom door and it’s still mostly covering his eyes so he almost walks right into hoseok, who is standing in the corridor with his hand raised to knock on namjoon’s door. 

“woah, sorry hobi,” he says, gripping hoseok’s bicep with one hand to right himself after he nearly trips over his own feet trying not to step on hoseok’s toes. 

“that’s okay, babe,” hoseok says, stepping into namjoon’s space instead of back out of it, which really isn’t helpful. it’s not unwelcomed, either. he cups a hand under namjoon’s elbow as if to keep him close, keep him touching him and maybe namjoon needs to re-examine that old thread of his relative horniness levels because he’s not sure it’s even humanely possible to be so quickly and so wholly turned on by the sight of someone he’s in love with not even three minutes after he was previously rolling around on a bed with two other incredibly attractive people that he is also in love with. either his dick has whiplash or his brain has a boner. namjoon doesn’t know which it is but it’s definitely … probably both. 

instead of trying to figure it out further, namjoon goes with a worn and familiar instinct he almost always finds within himself. whenever he finds something cool he instantly wants to share it with the people he loves most and here hoseok is, showing up with impeccable timing, as usual. 

“hey, check this out,” namjoon says and he pulls hoseok forward at the same time as he’s pushing his bedroom door all the way open. 

seokjin is on his hands and knees over yoongi, caging him in against namjoon’s bed with trembling arms. yoongi is cupping seokjin’s face in both of his hands and they look so good together, they touch each other in ways that make it so loud how well they are known to one another. everything about all the places their bodies touch sings of familiarity - not new but still burning desire bright in the fingers white knuckled in yoongi’s hair, in toes curling against seokjin’s calves, in the stuttering breaths panted back and forth between them. 

he can’t quite make sense of it or place it properly, but namjoon feels proud, somehow, watching them. gratitude stacks up alongside his pride and both are dwarfed by his own desire; for them but for hoseok too. for taehyung and jimin and jungkook. for all of them to be together in this - like this - too. 

“that’s - that’s fucking breathtaking,” hoseok says quietly; solemn. he’s leaning into namjoon’s room with both of his hands high up on either door side of the door frame and the position makes the muscles in his arms flex beautifully, perfectly showcased by the cutaway tank he’s wearing. 

“yeah,” namjoon agrees, his eyes following the obscenely low dip of the sides of hoseok’s shirt. namjoon can see the smooth, tanned stretch of his waist, the slow rise of firm, hard earned muscle where just the barest peek of his lats are visible. namjoon wants to catalogue every muscle on hoseok’s body. with his tongue. “breathtaking,” he echoes hoseok, his voice sounding faraway to his own ears but seemingly signalling something to hoseok because his gaze comes to namjoon like its been called. 

he blames the way hoseok is standing. his arms are just so nice and he’s leaning so far into namjoon’s room to look at yoongi and seokjin that his chest is almost pressed to namjoon’s and his elbows are already up out of the way so namjoon can just slide his hands around his waist, slip them back inside hoseok’s barely-there scrap of clothing so easy. hoseok’s back is all supple, lean muscle and getting his hands on him was all namjoon was thinking about so he finds himself stupidly, ridiculously shocked by it when he glances up and realizes that he’s basically standing nose to nose with hoseok, now, his hands pulling hoseok in completely flush against him. 

“hi there,” hoseok says, sweet and breathy, smiling at him like he’s pleased by this; like something about it or maybe something about namjoon himself just delights him. 

namjoon breathes in hard through his nose and then hoseok’s hands come off the door frame and it doesn’t matter which of them moves first because they’re both headed in the same direction: in. closer. to touch. 

hoseok lifts his arms up around namjoon’s shoulders and pushes his hands into namjoon’s hair and namjoon’s fingers grasp at the muscles of hoseok’s back because every time he gets this far inside hoseok’s personal space he’s hit hard with the urge to _have_ him; he wants to push him down onto something and hold him there, he needs - right now - to lift hoseok up and press him against the nearest vertical surface he can find. 

his hands get caught, for a second, his elbows snagging inside the not-there sleeves of hoseok’s tee but he pulls them free more with force than precision. something tears, maybe, but namjoon doesn’t pause to see what. he bends his knees to stoop just a little, just enough that he can band both arms tight under hoseok’s ass and then he’s up and in namjoon’s arms, his legs parting in the air to wrap around namjoon’s hips and that’s good, that’s a better angle. namjoon bounces him up a bit higher and walks forward until he has hoseok pinned between his body and the wall across from his bedroom. he’s too enthusiastic, too rough maybe, or maybe hoseok is just really into being manhandled because once his back hits the plaster his grip gets tight in namjoon’s hair and he breathes like the air is getting knocked out of him and then he narrows his eyes and goes for namjoon’s mouth fast and hard. 

it’s either fate or a cruel display of innate sexual superiority when hoseok’s fingernails drag down over the curve of namjoon’s skull, get him shivering even before he continues until he’s lightly scored a path down the length of namjoon’s bare neck. 

when he opens his mouth against hoseok’s, it is for reprieve. it is pure relief. 

and then hoseok gets to work, his sweet tongue reminding namjoon that every minute since they last did this was a total waste of fucking time and the sound namjoon makes is like a growl if growls could come from the depths of your very soul, from the depths of hell itself maybe because there has to be something fundamentally wicked about the way namjoon feels when he has one of the members of his band in his hands; there’s certainly nothing nice or polite or fair to be found in it. 

namjoon can feel hoseok’s heart pounding in his chest where they’re pressed together; his body a gorgeous contradiction; such soft skin covering firm, flexing muscle, his mouth languid when he kisses namjoon like he has all the time in the world for this but his fingers almost clawed against namjoon’s shoulders. his legs are locked hard around namjoon’s hips but when namjoon gets his head tipped back against the wall and bends to put his mouth to hoseok’s throat, his chest rises in aborted little waves, big breaths let loose like he can’t hold them in anymore, the almost pained noises he makes desperate and pleading. 

“oh god,” he gasps, the words thick enough that namjoon feels like he just got clubbed over the head by them, “oh fuck, please,” hoseok says and namjoon’s brain can’t really process that but his body understands perfectly so while his thoughts are still stuttering in his skull his hands are going to the buttons on hoseok’s shorts, tugging them open one by one, the ‘pop, pop, pop’ of sound loud in the otherwise silent corridor but nothing at all compared to the noise that comes out of hoseok’s mouth when namjoon gets his hand inside hoseok’s boxers. 

it’s not like namjoon has never seen hoseok naked before - he’s seen them all naked. like, a lot. way too much, honestly. it’s just plain mean how often they walk around half clothed or strip off like it’s nothing, like they don’t even know how hard it is for namjoon to look at them like that and know he can’t touch them. they’ve unknowingly been making things difficult for one another and for themselves, too, because as is very quickly, very intensely being established; they’re all basically rabid for one another. taehyung is the catalyst for it, taehyung is why they’re realizing just how far this goes, but the reality of it is that this goes all the way. it’s all of them. and that might be overwhelming to think about if namjoon took the time to - if he had the time to, that is - but he hasn’t and so he’s dealing with it instead like this: by getting momentarily totally lost in how much he wants them when he finally gets to touch them, now. 

hoseok’s breaths come hard and fast, his open mouth pressed damp and trembling to namjoon’s temple. namjoon curls his fingers around hoseok’s cock and strokes, slow so can get used to feeling of hoseok in his hand, slower then because it makes hoseok dig his heels into namjoon’s ass. 

“fuck, you’re so hot,” namjoon says into hoseok’s sweat shined collarbones. his tongue lolls out to taste them and hoseok’s hands push up under namjoon’s sweater, tug the hem of it up until it’s bunched under his arm pits. his hands slide around to cup namjoon’s pecs, his fingers digging in under the muscle, his thumbs rubbing rough across namjoon’s nipples. namjoon’s stomach clenches and his hand gets tighter, squeezing gently over the head of hoseok’s cock, feels pre-come web hot and sticky between his fingers. 

“yeah, so listen,” a faraway voice says and it’s not so much that the voice is far away that makes it give namjoon pause as it is the voice itself. who it belongs to. 

it’s jimin. 

namjoon freezes. 

his hand stills in hoseok’s boxers and he doesn’t feel bad about it because he can feel hoseok tense everywhere he’s touching him. 

“i support everything that’s happening here, i promise, i really do. but i don’t think you two fucking was part of the plan that taehyung laid out for us. not yet, at least.” 

hoseok’s legs fall away and namjoon tugs his sweater back down but stays standing between hoseok’s legs for a second so he can button hoseok’s shorts back up before he steps away. he pushes hoseok’s hair back out of his face for him and he wants to kiss him on the forehead so he does. hoseok smiles at him and lifts a hand to cup namjoon’s face, just for a second and then he sighs and then his dimples disappear and his mouth flattens as if to say ‘time to face the music.’ 

the whole point of this moment was to give namjoon time to gather himself, but what he sees when he turns around makes him think he should have maybe taken an hour. or like, a full week. 

jimin is sitting in the doorway to namjoon’s bedroom. he’s cross legged, with his back up against the frame of the door and namjoon had assumed jimin was talking to him and hoseok but he realizes now that he could just as easily have been talking to yoongi and seokjin, because that’s where jimin’s looking. seokjin and yoongi are sitting side by side on the edge of namjoon’s bed but they definitely only just arranged themselves that way because both their hair is an absolute disaster, seokjin hasn’t got a shirt on anymore and they’re zipping up their pants even as namjoon watches. they’re blushing and very carefully not looking at one another or at jimin but when seokjin looks up and catches namjoon’s eye he flashes him a grim smile and then a pouted, commiserating look that says ‘well damn, we almost got away with it.’ 

when namjoon drags his eyes to yoongi, yoongi’s eyes are big, his mouth tight. he huffs when they make eye contact like maybe he’d been trying to get namjoon’s attention for a minute. namjoon tilts his head and narrows his eyes, ready to concentrate on what yoongi wants to tell him. 

yoongi widens his eyes meaningfully, a ‘pay attention to this’ marker and then looks significantly to where jimin is still sitting on the floor, but has turned his head to look in this direction now. he and hoseok seem to be looking at one another. 

when namjoon looks back at yoongi, he’s lifting and dropping his eyebrows repeatedly, the facial expression equivalent of underlining a sentence on paper. 

namjoon gets it instantly. he doesn’t even need the helpful eyebrow punctuation. 

“hi, jimin-ah,” namjoon says and jimin lifts his eyes to him. he looks … dazed, almost, his face blank in a way that namjoon really hopes means he’s overwhelmed in the good way. “how are you? did you sleep well?” 

jimin expression turns very quickly completely incredulous. 

“sure, hyung. i slept well and then i went out for lunch with sungwoon hyung and then i came home and was thinking about having a nap but on my way to my room i walked into a weirdly spread out hyung line sex party featuring you.” 

that’s … not an inaccurate description of what this is, though it does make the whole thing sound far more intentional than it actually was. namjoon could say he walked into it, too. but it doesn’t explain why jimin decided to just sit down and what? watch? is that’s what was happening here? because fucking wow, that’s hot. 

“i’m sorry, jimin-ah. i didn’t really mean for this to happen, i was on my way to the kitchen and then i bumped into hobi and -” 

“your hand fell into his pants?” jimin supplies, reaching up to hoseok with both hands and letting him pull him up off the floor. hoseok ruffles his hair once he’s standing and namjoon is jealous of him. he wants to touch jimin’s hair. he wants jimin to want to touch him. he agrees whole-heartedly with what yoongi just communicated to him - it seems significant that jimin is here for this. even if no one got to touch him, it feels important that he wanted to be here for it. 

“i’m sorry if seeing this made you uncomfortable,” namjoon says and jimin folds his arms across his chest and sighs. over his shoulder, namjoon can see that yoongi and seokjin are fully dressed now and trying to fix their hair. it’s a very distinct kind of cool to know that they’re trying to put themselves back together after almost fucking on namjoon’s bed but a different if equally lovely type of joy spreads warmly through namjoon to watch them reach to comb one another’s messy bangs back into place. these hyungs touch each other with a special kind of affection; something sweet in the center but rough around the edges; enthusiastic but shy for clumsiness, fumbled still for the newness of it. they are beautiful, learning how to love each other in another way. 

“yeah, hyung. i was so totally horrified to stumble upon two of my jerk off fantasies happening in real life simultaneously that i had to sit down and make myself comfortable to watch.” jimin is blushing, just slightly but he doesn’t look away when he says it. it’s easy to read him: he’s overwhelmed by not uncomfortable. this is unfamiliar to him but he likes it. 

there are several things namjoon could say, to that. several very vivid things spring to mind instantly. but he opens his mouth to reply and then promptly shuts it again, because as he looks at jimin, seokjin gets up off the bed and comes to stand behind him, rests his chin on jimin’s shoulder and slides his hands around his waist. there has to be something criminal about how good seokjin and jimin look together, namjoon thinks wildly, desperately. it absolutely cannot be in any way legal for two people who are each separately unfairly attractive to somehow seem to become even more attractive when they’re just standing together. jimin tips his head back against seokjin’s shoulder and lets his eyes fall shut, the bared line of his throat working around a long swallow. namjoon reaches blindly for hoseok. he needs an emotional support hand to hold.

“you jerk off thinking about your hyungs, jimin-ah? that is so nice of you. i’m honored, truly,” seokjin says, stacking his hands on top of jimin’s stomach and tightening his hold on him, rocking him very gently side to side in his arms. “would you like to come to hyung’s room and tell me more about that? we can bring another hyung if you like. you can choose. whichever one you want.” 

“i don’t think you can just offer other people up like that, hyung,” jimin says, which isn’t ‘no’ and oh, namjoon is in trouble. he doesn’t think jimin would pick him, but even knowing that he could is enough to have his mind racing, his pulse chasing after it. 

seokjin laughs and turns his face in against jimin’s neck. he’s still rocking him slowly, sweetly, like he’s trying to soothe him, which is directly contradicted by the way namjoon can see jimin’s skin break out in goosebumps when seokjin drags his nose torturously slow up the side of his neck. 

“do you think any of them would say no to you, jimin? they can’t wait to touch you. ask them, go on,” seokjin urges, his voice so low that namjoon is almost convinced he can feel it rumbling against his skin too. jimin swallows thickly and his chest is starting to rise and fall visibly, heaving under his breaths. his hands slide down his own stomach until they reach seokjin’s and namjoon grips hoseok’s hand so tight he hears him suck in a pained hiss of breath, next to him. 

“ah, hyung,” jimin mostly moans and namjoon wants to drop to his knees and put his mouth to seokjin and jimin’s hands, wants to lick at where their fingers are tangling together, wants to drag his blush hot cheek down over jimin’s pelvis and bury his face between his legs. 

but jimin’s hands aren’t stilling on top of seokjin’s. he’s plucking at his fingers, pulling his hands away and twisting out of his grasp, all quick, fluid motion. 

“i can’t say i’m surprised, but taehyung is going to be disappointed in you, hyung,” jimin says, frowning at seokjin from a safe distance of a full two feet away. seokjin pouts and tries to step closer and jimin just shakes his head and takes three more steps backwards. “was i the only one there when taehyung told us his plans for us? i know it’s hard but you have to read between the lines, hyung. check the fine print. if taehyung wants to fuck all of us first, doesn’t that mean we can’t fuck each other before he does?” 

logically, that does seem to be the rationality underlying this chain of events. it’s just that namjoon hasn’t exactly been spending a lot of time thinking logically this week. or thinking at all, really. 

seokjin tilts his head, seeming to consider jimin’s point and hoseok speaks up from next to namjoon. 

“that uh -” he scratches at the back of his head with his free hand, his patented bashful gesture. he is adorable. namjoon squeezes his hand. “that does line up with something taehyung said. to me.” no one says anything. “when we were -” 

“when you were fucking,” yoongi supplies helpfully, joining seokjin in the doorway to namjoon’s room. they’re all clustered there now; hoseok and namjoon holding hands, seokjin lifting his arm so yoongi can duck under it and settle against his side. jimin is a little further down the corridor, standing between his and taehyung’s bedroom doors and edging away slowly like he’s afraid they might start chasing him. yoongi folds his arms over his chest and seokjin smoothes a hand over his hair. “that’s what you’re saying, right? that while taehyung was fucking you, he said he wants to be the first one to fuck all of us?” 

hoseok is blushing and jimin takes a step closer to them when he thinks no one is looking. namjoon is looking, but he doesn’t say anything. yoongi is looking too, if namjoon is reading the quick and wide-eyed ‘don’t spook him!’ look he slants at him right. 

“didn’t he say the same thing to you? why are you making me be the one to say this, hyung?” hoseok whines and yoongi grins at him. 

“because you’re cute when you’re embarrassed, hobi-yah,” yoongi smiles saccharine sweet and namjoon has no problem letting hoseok lean on him when he lifts his foot up off the ground to kick at yoongi. 

the kick doesn’t connect because jimin is there to grab for hoseok’s leg and hold him back. 

“this really isn’t anything to be kicking one another over, hyungs,” jimin says, looking both appropriately admonishing and skittish, like he hadn’t thought about it when he came back into their orbit. he drops hoseok’s leg back to the ground and edges away again. “this has been both fun and educational, but i think it’s important that the take away from this is that you can’t fuck each other until after taehyung does.” all four of them are staring at him and it’s not really because of what he’s saying but it’s absolutely because he’s standing there being super hot talking about group sex. well, that’s why namjoon is looking at him, anyway. who knows what’s going on in the other three’s heads, honestly. 

jimin seems to second guess himself, under their scrutiny. 

“well. i mean. you can do whatever you want. taehyung isn’t the boss of anybody, not even himself, but -” 

“but it’s hot that he wants to fuck us first,” yoongi finishes for him, ever helpful. “yeah we already kind of established this. or, well. some of us did? i can only speak for myself but i’m into him wanting us all for himself first. it feels fitting, since wanting him was probably what made us figure out that we don’t only want him, right?” 

yoongi has such a way with words. he so very easily puts what he’s thinking and feeling into language; translates it like there’s no pauses for him, no glitches between the internal and the verbal. 

“ _you’re_ hot, hyung,” namjoon says and he didn’t really mean to but he doesn’t want to take it back once it’s out there. it’s true. he means it. very much. 

yoongi makes a scoffing sound and then covers his mouth, covers his whole face though it’s pointless because as big as his hands are - and they are big and incredibly lovely, namjoon suddenly wishes he’d got a look at them spread out across seokjin’s beautiful ass - the pink of his cheeks is stark enough against his pale complexion that nothing could hide it. namjoon wants to coo at him. he also really wants to suck his dick. 

“okay,” seokjin says, patting yoongi on the shoulder consolingly, “so to conclude: we all think the rest of us are very hot, we’re across the board interested in fucking everyone and we all agree to let taehyung be the one to get that ball rolling, so to speak, because he’s earned that right after the rest of us objectifying him for years and using his hotness as a gateway through which to finally accept our nefarious group sex desires, yes?” 

namjoon kind of wants to applaud that. hoseok actually does. 

yoongi shrugs. 

“i think that ball is already very much rolling, hyung, but sure. accurate summation otherwise.” 

“oh, i’m sorry yoongi, i forgot that that particular ball rolled right over you last night. silly me. i was referring, of course, to those of us who possess enough self control to not have temper tantrumed their way into taehyung’s bed yet. my sincere apologies.” seokjin starts to bow at yoongi but is halted by yoongi sinking his teeth into his shoulder. he shrieks and starts to try and tickle yoongi and namjoon guesses that’s as good a way to bookmark whatever the hell this was as anything else would be. he hasn’t got a clue what’s going on right now but that’s not unusual. plus he knows exactly what took place before it and he was very pleased to be a part of it. 

“okay, i need to go eat,” he says. 

“cool, i gotta go work on some stuff,” hoseok says, gesturing in the direction of his room. 

they both lean in at the same time and that would be the best part of this if the other part of it wasn’t getting to kiss hoseok. 

they part to go their separate ways, leaving yoongi and seokjin still doing whatever it is that they’re doing in front of namjoon’s room. hoseok throws his arm around jimin’s shoulder and leads him away as he goes and namjoon feels good about all of this. 

clarity and honesty are important. they’re staples of the bangtan life and have been since the very beginning. their transparency with one another and their insistence that that extends to the whole group when the matter is one that can affect all of them has always worked to their favour. 

it’s important that they’re all on the same page about this, because that’s how they tackle everything else. that’s how they’ve gotten to where they are today; by doing everything together. 

none of them have ever put themselves first or prioritized their own needs over what’s best for the whole group and that’s what stands to them most, namjoon thinks. 

that’s also, he’s pretty sure, why when he spaces out as he’s eating his breakfast, his head is filled with thoughts of jimin even though it has officially been decided now that namjoon gets to fuck taehyung today. 

he wants that. he really, really wants that. 

but they need jimin. 

and it looks to namjoon like they’re a big step closer to having him, now. 

namjoon hums the entire way to work and he doesn’t even his airpods in. 

he takes the stairs two at a time, three sometimes when he gets struck with a small burst of ambition. 

he skips down the corridor to his studio and it’s fine because there’s no one around to see him. 

bang pd calls him upstairs to go over some appearance requests for next year and he skips up there too because he doesn’t give a shit who sees him. 

namjoon is happy and he doesn’t care who knows it. 

there’s six other people who understand it perfectly, so namjoon doesn’t even care to wonder what anyone else might think. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

by pure chance, namjoon happens to glance into one of the larger studio spaces on his way back down to his studio. 

the doors on this corridor are mostly made of frosted glass but every second one has a thick transparent strip at about eye level. a little lower, for namjoon. he sees movement inside as he passes and stoops by instinct, his eyes drawn by a familiar head of hair. 

taehyung is standing up on a makeshift podium of sorts in the center of the room and there’s racks and racks and racks of clothing haphazardly arranged around him. it’s just him and three of the cordi noonas in there as far as namjoon can see. there’s probably a manager around somewhere, maybe sitting against a wall playing with their phone, or gone out to grab coffee while taehyung is safe and busy. 

‘busy’ might be a stretch, though. 

he’s got his shirt off and doesn’t seem to be reaching for a new one to try on. none of the noonas are offering him one either because they’re all too busy laughing at whatever it is he’s saying. his hands are on his hips and his face is brightly animated under the dark flop of his hair. he looks completely at ease, fully focused on the story he’s telling and namjoon can’t for one second blame these noonas or anyone else for being completely captivated by him. when taehyung decides to take center stage, the whole world stops spinning, as far as namjoon is concerned. 

the noonas burst into a chorus of genuinely delighted laughter and taehyung smiles at them, pleased to have been able to entertain them. 

someone hands him a shirt and he pulls it on carefully over his head, fixing his hair once it’s on. 

he glances briefly at the mirror set up against the far right wall and then spins quickly back to face the noonas, holding his hands up in a ‘well?’ gesture. 

namjoon thinks he’s gorgeous. he’s pretty sure the noonas agree, though they probably find a far more professional way to put it. 

taehyung doesn’t notice him watching and namjoon doesn’t interrupt. 

he goes back to his studio to do what he does best. 

with his feelings for his friends front and center, namjoon creates. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

these days, namjoon struggles to sit with his thoughts and those alone for company for too long. 

there had been a time when he could happily spend days that way, when the prospect of weeks spent like that would have sounded like pure bliss. 

but that was when namjoon had been very young and full to the point of overflowing with fear. he hadn’t known himself well enough to trust that other people could both understand and love him. he hadn’t known how to survive when he encountered those for whom neither of those things was true. 

bangtan knowing and loving him had happened slowly, each of those things overlapping and intertwining. sometimes they took a leap in loving him before they understood him any better and sometimes they’d let long stretches of time stay devoted to knowing him more, listening to him more closely, hearing the things he didn’t know how to say. 

there are plenty of people who love him and don’t understand him. there are people who understand certain parts of him and have decided that that alone is reason enough not to love him. there are people who love him and don’t want to understand him; don’t try to know who he really is because they’re already married to their own ideas of him. there are people who want neither to know nor love him. there’s a lot of those. 

in the beginning, it was the fear of these types of connections and perceptions that kept namjoon locked away in his own head. he was safe there. if he cared only for how he thought of himself, how well he knew himself, that gave him the freedom he had needed then to decide that what other people thought of him didn’t matter and couldn’t hurt him. but his fear of what they might say about him had meant that he’d treated his own mind, his own thoughts, his own company like a fortress. a place of absolute protection from what he couldn’t at that time handle hearing. it was supposed to help him. but it had begun, at some point, to become something more like a prison. solitary confinement. 

yoongi had been the first one to catch that and help namjoon break out of it. 

in those days, dragging namjoon out of his studio hadn’t been an act devised to prevent overworking because that’s still a fairly constant aspect of their work model depending on where they are in their schedules. no, back when they were still rookies, they’d all come together to form a six man team dedicated to saving namjoon from himself. 

namjoon loves his brain. he didn’t always, but even hating it and thinking he’d have been happier if he’d simply been dumber - as had been the theme of his early teenage years - was preferable to those long, dark stretches of months when he’d wanted to know only his own mind, felt safe in assuming only that he knew and understood himself; that others could and should stay a mystery to him as much as he had then been determined to be for them. he’d been hiding from the world, hiding even from the people who wanted very much for him to let them in and tried a hundred times, in a thousand different ways, to show him that he was welcome and present in their thoughts and hearts as well. 

it hadn’t been easy and it hadn’t happened overnight, but the six of them had shown him that he deserved better than a life lived locked away in his own head. he wanted to know and be known, he wanted to share and love and live with others and it had still terrified him to think he could be misunderstood, he would be judged, he may be hated but the six of them offered themselves up to him as a test run, a tiny subset of society to haltingly, clumsily spread his wings with. and with them, he’d learned to soar. he still gets to fly as high as he likes with them and that’s what makes it okay when he crashes and burns sometimes, when he encounters someone who wants to try and clip his wings. 

namjoon’s understanding of himself covers the most ground, quantitatively, he thinks. he’s had the most time to explore his own thoughts, so it only makes sense that he’d have mapped more of that territory than anyone else could have. but he’s not the only person who really knows him, anymore. he’s not even always the person who knows him best. every single one of the others has moments when they still surprise him by knowing or noticing things about him that he himself wasn’t aware of, not exactly like how they are. if you added up what the six of them know about him, it would amount to more than he knows about himself because he is one person with one point of view but they have six. they look at him from six different angles, they’re six people worth of impressions that he could never have of himself. and he loves who they know him to be. 

they know him and they love him even when they don’t like him, when they can’t understand him. 

they freed him from thinking he was only worthy of himself, would only ever deserve to be alone. 

they broke him out so they could teach him that loving and knowing and seeing and being and living were a complicated and constant balancing act that couldn’t be won, not conclusively, not completely. they showed him that he doesn’t need to feel like because he can’t do all of that perfectly, he shouldn’t try at all. 

they saved him so they could show him what he hadn’t known he’d been running from - them. home. 

namjoon still thinks a lot, still uses thought as a kind of language to translate for himself what he sees into what he feels and vice versa. but his mind is no longer a fortress, his thoughts are no longer the last safe boundary between himself and everything else. what he thinks flows now into what he says and what he does. he can no longer separate his thoughts from his feelings and his feelings are so coloured through with six other people that he can’t tell what began in him and what didn’t; when how jimin feels about seokjin got tangled with how namjoon feels about both of them and went on to knot into how yoongi feels about namjoon, how hoseok feels about how jungkook and taehyung feel about him. 

they’re seven distinct individuals but they overlap in as many places, in as many ways as they don’t. 

and if you ask namjoon, the parts where they are the most muddled, the most loudly, chaotically combined are the places where they shine brightest. 

writing for them is never hard. putting into words just how much he feels for them is his life’s work and he gets better at it every day. 

he doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel like he gets it exactly right; he’s never entirely confident that he has done the truth of it justice. 

but that’s okay. 

he’s got years and years and years to get there. 

they’ve got time and they’ll keep using it the way they always have; to get closer, to know better, to go deeper, to grow more. 

sometimes it doesn’t seem possible, sometimes it will seem in moments like there can’t possibly be a feeling of loving one another, of knowing one another, of wanting and needing one another that could in any way go deeper than this one does. 

it’s been years now and namjoon is never not surprised to find that he’s wrong about that. 

the longer this lasts, the further it goes, the more and more sure he becomes that they are infinite, in ways. it doesn’t make sense and it shouldn’t be possible, it’s a concept that namjoon doesn’t know how to process. 

but where his thoughts can’t take him, his feelings step up to go. 

he’s in love with six other people and that’s hard to cite logic or reason for. a namjoon who was still locked up in his own mind and locked away from all else outside of that could never have found himself here, would never have accepted it; probably wouldn’t ever have come to find himself even capable of feeling like this. 

they didn’t show him that he could have this, they helped him become someone without whom ‘this’ would not exist. 

he adores them. he never wants to know what it’s like to live without them again. even in the moments when he needs to be by himself, needs a breather to process and work through something, it’s always either about them or some part of himself he’s working to bring to them, to show them. 

when namjoon is alone with his thoughts now it’s not because he’s made himself think he has to be. he can know now that it’s not ever going to be for long. 

namjoon sits with himself and he writes for them, writes about them. 

and when he has done enough or when he simply misses them, whether it’s because he’s got nothing left to give today or because the weight of that is so huge and so pressing that he needs more hands to hold it, when he no longer wants to be alone he gets to come back to them. and though he never really leaves them behind or lets them go far from his thoughts, feels so strongly for and about them always, getting to see and touch them again is always the best part, sometimes makes the being apart from them seem worth it for that moment alone. 

so namjoon sits for a few hours and lets his feelings fall out of him onto paper, spends a few hours more tidying them up and hiding what he really means in some ways but leaving it absolutely blatant in others. 

and then he gets up and stretches his hands over his head until his back cracks audibly, satisfactorily. 

he doesn’t tidy up after himself because he still has a little bit more to do before he feels like he’s earned the right to go home so when he opens the door to his studio he’s thinking about wandering up to the break room with the hidden snack stocks, the secret cookie shelf that he’s pretty sure only he and whoever stocks it know about. he keeps a tally of what gets taken from it and either he has special secret knowledge or big hit’s interns are wasted on these tasks.  


he’s kind of excited to see if any more snack packs have gone missing since he last checked, honestly; it feels vaguely like he’s a spy about to embark on a mission, but as is par for the course with important operations like these, namjoon is thwarted early on in his plans. 

he’s at the door and then he’s through it, about to close it behind him and head off upstairs in search of both knowledge and treats. 

but then there’s a blur of blue-grey coming at him faster than he can properly comprehend or prepare himself for and he’s pushed back through the door, the blur propelling him and following him in. 

the blur is against him then, warm against his chest. 

the blur lifts its head to look at him and then namjoon is a blur, he’s a not-entirely there streak of light, a splash of colour, a burst of sound, a bite of flavor. 

jimin lifts up onto his toes to kiss him and namjoon doesn’t know what he is then, namjoon doesn’t know anything at all that isn’t jimin’s mouth, hot and _there_ and hungry, insistent. 

“i’m sorry hyung,” jimin breaks away to mumble, still up on his tippy toes, his nose fitted in against namjoon’s and brushing at his cheek, his skin so, so soft. his eyes are huge and namjoon can still feel the heat of his mouth, the warmth of his breath. “i - he’s driving me crazy and i needed to, i just wanted to ... i have to -” his wide eyes slip shut, the flutter of his eyelashes the last thing namjoon sees because then jimin is kissing him again and his eyes are closed and all he can feel is jimin’s soft, plush lips pressed hard into his, his lovely little hands coming up to cup namjoon’s face and tilt him down more so jimin can lift his tongue up into namjoon’s mouth, an aggressive kiss that communicates jimin’s mood to him much better than his words had. 

namjoon holds still and takes it, parts his lips against jimin’s and hums for it every time jimin’s tongue touches his. jimin’s hands climb higher, his fingers pushing up into namjoon’s hair, the pads of his thumbs resting behind namjoon’s ears. jimin kisses him hard and fast and then slower, sweeter but no less needy. 

eventually, the press of their lips becomes something entirely different to how it started; languid and easy, syrupy and leisurely; just the soft smudge of their mouths and both of jimin’s hands in namjoon’s, now. 

when jimin pulls away, puts his forehead to namjoon’s chest and goes no further, namjoon blinks. 

they’re sitting down now, him in the middle of the couch and jimin more on him than he is next to him. he’s got one leg wedged between namjoon’s thighs and the other planted into the cushions. he’s on his knees over namjoon but he sits back now, sits down on the leg he’s been straddling. 

“sorry for mauling you, hyung,” he says, quiet and capable of proper sentence construction again, seemingly. namjoon can’t relate. jimin just kissed him. jimin is _sitting on his knee_. full sentences are for people who didn’t just have park jimin’s tongue in their mouth, namjoon decides. jimin lifts his head to look at him and namjoon doubles down on that sentiment. “taehyung was being … taehyung and i can only contain so much sexual frustration at a time, hyung. it’s not like i can do anything to get rid of it other than …” jimin trails off, his gaze falling away and namjoon doesn’t understand even a little bit how he came to have jimin sitting on his knee telling him he had to come kiss the living daylights out of because just jerking off isn’t enough to satiate his sexual needs right now. namjoon doesn’t know what he could possibly have done to deserve this, but he knows better than to get caught up in questioning it. he knows exactly what to do, in this situation. 

“jimin-ah,” he says and then winces, because he didn’t intend for his voice to pitch so low, “jimin. you really don’t have to apologize for kissing me. if anything, i should be thanking you. i’m very grateful, jimin,” namjoon explains and is pleased when it makes jimin lift his eyes to his again. “you are very, very hot. and i want to kiss you every time i see you. so please don’t apologize again. if this happens again. or even if it doesn’t.” namjoon doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. this seems to be complicated for jimin in a way that it isn’t for him, so he doesn’t want to make any assumptions. “but whenever there’s anything i can do to make you feel better, to lessen your burdens - whether it’s this or anything else you need - come to me, jimin. i want to help. hyung loves you, you know that, right?” 

jimin doesn’t look away from him this time, doesn’t even blink. his arms come up so slow it’s like he’s not even moving on purpose and then he’s taking namjoon’s face in his hands again and stroking the pad of his thumb up under namjoon’s bottom lip. 

“i know you love me, hyung,” he says and he’s still not blinking, stares into namjoon’s eyes like breaking eye contact would ruin something, in this moment. “but are you in love with me?” he asks and his voice changes, gets small and solemn and stupidly, painfully unsure. 

“oh, jimin-ah,” namjoon says and has to loop his arms around jimin’s waist, has to pull him into a hug. he presses a kiss to the top of jimin’s head, once he has him in his arms, curled up tense against his chest. “of course i’m in love with you. you didn’t know? i’m sorry, jimin-ah. i should have told you. i thought it was obvious, but i should have checked, i should have made sure you knew. i’m sorry, baby.” 

jimin lifts his head to look at him again and whatever he sees on namjoon’s face makes him lift his arms up around namjoon’s neck. they’re pressed together chest to chest now and god, how namjoon loves him. how very much in love with all of them he is. he’s the luckiest man on earth. 

“i did know, hyung,” jimin says, “i think. i thought i didn’t know for sure, but it feels like i did. hearing you say it didn’t change anything. i think even if you weren’t in love with me i’d still be in love with you. i don’t know how not to be. i don’t want to know what it’s like not to be.” 

namjoon has to hold his breath, for a second. he needs to let that settle. 

for all that jimin is the most physically affectionate in a lot of ways, as supportive as he is with his words and his touches, he leans heavily on talking about all the good things the rest of them are or do or can be. sometimes, namjoon suspects, he’s as effusive as he is in those ways because it’s hard for him to open up about what _he_ feels and he’s hoping that no one else will notice if he can just be loud enough about the things they all know, the things he knows they need to hear. jimin is kind and sweet and patient and he listens so intently to everything they tell him, everything any of them need to say. but he also offers up his shoulder and his ear and his hugs so don’t come looking for him with questions to ask, namjoon has realized. 

so to hear him open up when no one has pressed him to is special. the fact that what he’s saying is about namjoon personally is something else entirely. 

“it’s all of us, jimin-ah,” namjoon finds himself needing to say, because this isn’t about him. not just him. “all of them love you like i do. are in love with you just like i am. none of us would ever want to hurt you. we might, anyway, because this probably isn’t always going to run smoothly and if it seems like it’s going to be too much for you, if you love us but it’s different for you, that’s okay. whatever you need, we’ll make work.”

jimin lets him talk without interrupting and when he’s done there’s silence for a moment. namjoon, for the first time in a long time, doesn’t know what jimin is going to say. it’s clear to all of them, he’s pretty sure, that something about this is different for jimin, seems more difficult somehow. that much is evident, but namjoon doesn’t know if jimin is dragging his heels because he really doesn’t want this, or because he wants it a different way, or wants it but is struggling anyway. before this conversation, it had occurred to namjoon that jimin could be in love with taehyung but only taehyung. it would be very like jimin to feel that way and still say nothing upon taehyung announcing his intentions to fuck five other men, their best friends at that. jimin is nothing if not self-sacrificing and that’s never as true as it is in his relationships with them; with taehyung above and beyond anyone else. jimin would do anything for taehyung. he’d do something terrible to himself if he thought it would make taehyung happy. but it wouldn’t, is the thing. namjoon trusts taehyung to know jimin well enough to not let him hurt himself like that. he really doesn’t think taehyung would be doing what they’re doing if there was so much as the tiniest chance that it could hurt jimin. jimin is the most emotionally demonstrative of them, but taehyung is the most emotionally intelligent. he knows how jimin feels better than namjoon does and namjoon knows taehyung well enough to know that taehyung wouldn’t have started all of this if he thought it would get him anywhere but closer to jimin. they’re a package deal. even within the package deal that bangtan is, taehyung and jimin are another single unit. when namjoon feels especially flowery about them, he thinks of himself and jungkook and the hyung line as standing in a circle surrounding taehyung and jimin, standing together in the center of them. in so many ways the two of them are the center, the beginning and end of everything they do, how they get there too; how they ever manage to get anything done. 

bangtan is the body but taehyung and jimin are the heart of that and without them nothing works, so namjoon knows, he decides, that taehyung wouldn’t do this if he didn’t know that jimin was with him on it. 

plus, jimin just told namjoon he was in love with him. which - to be totally clear - is very cool. namjoon might still be blushing. 

“why does everyone think i’m against this?” jimin asks and as much as namjoon can understand why they all do seem to harbour that suspicion, it makes sense for jimin to ask that question, too. 

“well, you haven’t said you’re against it,” namjoon agrees, “but you haven’t really said you’re … for it? it seems like you’re maybe … not ready, yet? but that’s okay,” he’s quick to assure jimin, “there’s no rush. nothing has to happen right now.” 

“namjoon hyung,” jimin says, taking his face in his hands and staring deep and unblinking into his eyes. namjoon almost goes cross-eyed. “if i don’t get to fuck taehyung before this week is out, i might actually lose my mind.” namjoon does go cross-eyed, then, because jimin leans in further until they’re almost nose to nose. “and once i’ve done that? i’m going to drag jungkook away by his hair and rim him until he cries. you can watch if you want. that’d be handy, actually, because right after that i’m going to finally find out what these big lovely thighs of yours look like lubed up and pressed together for me to fuck. i haven’t been able to narrow the hyungs down to specifics yet, but i want them just as badly as i want you. which, if it isn’t clear yet, is very, _very_ fucking badly, hyung.” 

namjoon is definitely blushing now. he’s also at least half hard in his sweats. jimin sitting on his knee still isn’t helping. neither is the way he’s rubbing his thigh up against namjoon’s dick. 

“so what’s the problem then? what’s going on that you’re all skittish and not looking us in the eyes about this?” namjoon all but demands, slightly hysterical, but jimin is shifting on his thigh now like namjoon isn’t the only one who is affected by this and yeah, ‘hysterical’ is a pretty accurate description of how he feels right now. 

“wanting to fuck you all has never been the problem, hyung,” jimin says, with the ease and confidence of someone who knows that what he wants, he inevitably gets. he’s not wrong but namjoon has to pause to wonder just what in the fuck they fed the maknaes of this group. is he like this? he kind of hopes he’s like this. “but this isn’t just fucking. right? we’re not all just going to be banging each other. well, we will. but it’s going to be more than that, isn’t it?” for this, the certainty bleeds out of his voice. he stills on namjoon’s knee, goes tense all over in his arms. 

“this couldn’t ever be just fucking,” namjoon says solemnly; a vow. “this couldn’t ever be ‘just’ anything, jimin-ah. it’s us. and you know what that means. we’re all in.” 

jimin untenses, slowly. his hands are on either side of namjoon’s neck and his thumbs stroke up over the line of namjoon’s adam’s apple softly, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. 

“that’s going to be complicated, hyung. it’s not going to be easy. what if someone gets jealous? what if someone gets hurt? what if all of us do? fucking is one thing, but feelings are something else.” feelings are harder for him, is what he means. he doesn’t say it, but namjoon hears it anyway. that’s how they are, how they’ve always been. and that’s not going to change. that’s what’s going to make this work. 

namjoon locks his arms around jimin’s middle and gently crushes him to his chest. he holds him as tight as he possibly can without hurting him, as close as he can get him to himself. 

“all of that could happen, jimin-ah. most of it probably will. but don’t we already hurt one another, sometimes? haven’t we made a lot of mistakes up until now? don’t you get jealous even when there’s nothing to really be jealous of?” jimin nods minutely against his chest, the movement carefully contained like he’s ashamed to admit it. “i do too, jimin-ah. i get jealous of how easy it is for the rest of you to touch each other all the time. i’ve wished for years now that i knew how to do that without it being too much for me because it’s too close to what i really want. when i see the way you and taehyung are with one another, i get unbelievably jealous. i want to be able to touch you the way he does.” jimin lifts his head to look at namjoon, seems honestly surprised by that. but namjoon can only shrug at him, because it’s true. 

“but you could, hyung. you could touch all of us that way. you should have. none of us would mind. i’d have really liked it, hyung.” it’s easy to see that jimin means that. as soon as he has said it he’s leaning in to get close to namjoon again. he rubs his cheek up along the line of namjoon’s jaw like a particularly affectionate cat. he’s as usual very helpful to namjoon’s thought and decision making processes. 

“you don’t normally touch me like this, jimin-ah,” namjoon says, sitting very still and patiently, delightedly letting jimin touch him however he wants. he’s nosing up under namjoon’s jaw now, tilting his head back with his thumbs so he can drag his mouth down his neck, pressing kisses in a pattern that seems to make sense to him. namjoon gulps. it pains him to interrupt. “why are you comfortable doing this now? what changed?” 

jimin’s face appears in his line of vision again, his head popping up so cutely that namjoon has to grin at him, he has no other choice. he’s always loved jimin, has loved and cherished him in a hundred different ways for years now, for forever it feels like sometimes, but this is new. jimin’s hair is mussed and his mouth is still kiss flushed and seeing him like this feels almost like meeting him again for the very first time. 

“well,” jimin’s eyebrows furrow, “you’re in love with me. and i’m in love with you. we can touch each other differently now, because we know that it is different. right, hyung?” 

namjoon leans in to kiss him, just a quick, sweet latch of lips because he wants to. because he already misses having jimin pressed completely against him. 

“sure, jimin-ah. but don’t you feel the same way about hobi? about jin-hyung and jungkook and taehyung and yoongi-hyung too?” 

jimin nods, quick and sure this time. 

“it’s the same,” he says, “well, it’s different. but i love them the same way i love you, hyung” 

“and you can be like this with me. you can be in love with me and touch me differently and that’s okay, that’s good, isn’t it? so why would it be any different with the others? you know they feel the same way about you, don’t you?” just because jimin keeps his feelings close doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand them, either. namjoon knows jimin can’t have missed the way they all look at him. he knows jimin is perceptive enough to probably have figured some parts of this out long before namjoon had. 

“i don’t think it’s possible to be in love the way i am if it’s not returned, hyung,” jimin says, because he’s actually just as philosophical as namjoon is, he just hides it better. “even if we never talked about it before now, we were already in it. we were treating one another like we were in love, just without the …” 

namjoon has never really thought about that, not the way jimin has put it, but he’s right. namjoon has been thinking about being in love with them as the next step of loving them, but jimin’s understanding of it is more accurate. he’s been in love this whole time, he just showed it and said it in ways that didn’t spell it out. and the rest of them were right there with him, finding their own ways of being in love without calling it that, because jimin is absolutely right - this isn’t the kind of love you can be in alone. this isn’t part of a feeling, or the beginnings of something. the kind of love they’re in is already whole. it’s returned and shared and between all of them, they’ve built it to completion. they’ve made it real. 

“so if that’s all that’s been missing, why are you scared?” namjoon says it with as much patience and kindness as he can, because he knows he has a tendency to get clipped when he’s problem solving out loud. it’s impatience, excitement that makes him that way, but they’ve all told him that it can make him come across as being brusque instead and he never means for that but he especially doesn’t, right now. “what’s the worst thing that could happen? what are you thinking that’s making this so difficult for you?” 

jimin slumps a little where he’s sitting. he presses his lips together and hums, uncertain. namjoon doesn’t push, so he doesn’t speak for a long moment. 

he folds his hands in his lap and looks at namjoon with big, serious eyes. 

“what if it goes wrong because of me? what if everything gets ruined and it’s my fault, hyung?” 

“oh jimin-ah. is that what you’ve been thinking? is that why you’re being so careful?” namjoon wants to hug him close again, but jimin doesn’t move to touch him so he just rolls his shoulders back and puts his hands palm up on the couch on either side of his thighs. if jimin wants to touch him, namjoon’s right there and ready for it. 

“when i realized what was happening, or - no. when i realized that this was finally happening, i thought about that, hyung. i thought about what the worst possible thing to come from it could be. and i thought about us all deciding to do this together and then me doing something that made it all fall apart. i don’t think i could bear that, hyung.” jimin still doesn’t reach for namjoon, but he shifts forward like maybe his body knows what he needs better than his thoughts do. it makes namjoon think of his and seokjin’s pinkies spread out toward one another on his sheets this morning. it makes namjoon realize that they’re always, always trying to get closer to one another; only ever seeking more. 

“like what?” namjoon asks, because he understands this particular path of self-sabotaging logic all too well. “what kind of thing do you think you might do that would ruin it?” 

jimin does move, then. he sits up off of namjoon’s knee and turns over to throw himself into the couch by namjoon’s side. he slumps down against him and all but head butts namjoon in the chest until namjoon obliges and lifts a hand to his hair, brushes his fingers through it as jimin talks. 

“i don’t know, hyung. i couldn’t really think of any specifics. i got caught up in thinking about how terrible that would feel. the guilt of that. and that made me feel like i had tripped and fallen while the rest of you were still walking on, without me, without noticing.” jimin reaches for namjoon’s other hand, fidgets with the silver rings on his fingers. “and that made things weird. that made you all think i didn’t want this. so if i was able to fuck it up before it even really started -” 

“jimin-ah,” namjoon cranes his neck to look down into jimin’s face. “we couldn’t do this without you. it wouldn’t be right. it wouldn’t be what we all want, if it wasn’t with you. you say it like we kept on heading towards something without noticing that you weren’t with us, or thinking badly of you because you weren’t exactly where the rest of us were.” jimin nods at that and it kind of breaks namjoon’s heart. “but it’s not like that. it was never like that, jimin-ah. we could all see you were struggling with this. every single one of us knew, without us having to say anything to one another. it was more like - like we took a step and then stopped, because we knew instantly that something was wrong, because you weren’t there with us. so we all turned around to wait for you. we weren’t going any further without you, jimin-ah.” 

“and if i’m there with the rest of you but i do something stupid and wreck everything?” jimin asks and namjoon doesn’t know how he can’t hear how ridiculous that sounds. how absurd it is just as a concept, let alone the likely inevitability jimin’s trying to sell it as. 

“have you ever done anything to hurt any of us on purpose?” namjoon asks. 

jimin pouts. 

“no, hyung. of course not. but i’ve still hurt you all. and what if i do something terrible by accident? what if i don’t realize that something i’m doing is bad for all of us, hyung?” 

namjoon has to gather jimin up in his arms, mostly in his lap, then. jimin curls up into it, tucks his head up under namjoon’s chin and folds in on himself but keeps hold of namjoon’s hand. 

“okay, first of all,” namjoon says, locking his fingers between jimin’s, “it’s rude of you to assume that if something was wrong the rest of us would just let that continue. we’d do what we always do, jimin-ah, we’d talk about it. we’d fix it. and if you did something to hurt us by accident? even all of us? well it would be an accident. we’d still be hurt, but we’re not going to break up - what, the whole relationship? the group? - just because you make a mistake? jimin-ah. we would never. you know that.” 

jimin doesn’t say anything for a moment. he looks down at their joined hands and flexes his fingers between namjoon’s but stays silent. 

“i guess …” he sighs, long and deep, “i got so caught up in thinking about how terrible it would be that i forgot to think properly about what would have to happen to get us to that point. you’re right, hyung. i do know that. i knew it before you even said it, before any of this happened. but i got scared, hyung. i want this so much and …” he trails off with a frustrated sound. 

but there’s no need for him to be frustrated. namjoon knows what he means. namjoon knows exactly what he’s trying to say. 

“it makes sense, jimin-ah,” namjoon says and nods when jimin looks up at him. “the things we want the most are the hardest for us to let ourselves have. the more there is to gain, the more there is to potentially lose, too.” 

“right. that’s it exactly, hyung,” jimin says and his eyes are bright now, his almost frantic nodding so fucking cute namjoon kind of wants to cry. 

“but that’s for things you enter into with no guarantees. with people you don’t know or can’t trust. that’s what makes that stuff scary; you have to give up your control to someone or something unknown,” namjoon explains and jimin tilts his head, considering. 

“but that’s not what this is,” he says, seeing where namjoon is going with this. “no one can take control away from me in this. because it’s just us. we’ll share control like we share everything else. and we all want the same thing. oh, hyung,” he says, his expression going slack, realization fully dawning. “i did all that to myself for no reason.” 

namjoon smiles at him, feels so soft towards him in that moment that he’s pretty sure it makes the expression look completely sappy. 

“nah. you did all that to yourself because this is important to you. you got stressed and scared because you’re invested in this, in us. that says a lot about who you are, jimin-ah. it bodes pretty well for this whole thing, actually. when we all care so much, how can it go wrong?” 

“it can’t, hyung. we won’t let it,” jimin says, completely sure and certain and namjoon has to put his hand to his chest, can’t cope in that moment with how very much he feels for him. how proud of him he is, how grateful he is to be loved by him, how thankful he is that he gets to love him, too. 

“there you go, sweetheart,” he says, grinning. “welcome to where the rest of us are. we’re very glad you’re here.” 

jimin sits up straight and loops his arms up around namjoon’s neck, climbing the rest of the way into his lap. 

“how is it,” he asks, lifting his arms to cradle the back of namjoon’s head in his hands, “that one conversation with you can detangle weeks of brain knots i tie myself into? how are you this hot and this smart, hyung?” 

namjoon blushes and giggles and jimin is the one cooing at him, now. 

“lovely hyung,” jimin whispers, leaning in, “you take care of us so well, joon-hyung.” 

sitting in his studio with jimin in his lap and letting him suck at his bottom lip, namjoon feels very much like he is the one being taken care of in this scenario. and expertly so. 

by the time jimin bounces up out of his lap, he’s grinning properly for the first time in days even as he’s darkly muttering about going to find taehyung and give him a taste of his own medicine. namjoon sends a quick, heartfelt ‘fighting!’ out into the ether for his gorgeous dongsaeng who has no idea what he’s about to find himself dealing with. he doesn’t think about warning him, though. he’s kind of got it coming, all things considered. 

“hey, if you do find him,” namjoon calls out when jimin is reaching for the handle of the door, “could you let him know that uh -” how exactly does one word this kind of thing properly? namjoon doesn’t even know where to begin. so he decides not to try at all. “tell him that i’m next. me and jin-hyung decided. if that’s cool with him. and you, i guess?” 

jimin twists back to look at namjoon, seems surprised by something he’s said. maybe he wanted to go next? 

“oh no, hyung,” he says, starting to laugh and trying to cover it with his hand. “i’m not delivering that particular spoiler. you have to be the one to tell him that. and if you feel inclined to make me happy at all, you’ll film his reaction for me.” 

namjoon doesn’t understand what he means by that. 

“jimin, what do you mean by that?” he ends up yelling at the back of a firmly closed door, jimin nowhere to be seen. 

“well okay, then,” he says to himself, deciding he’s probably better off not knowing, anyway. 

he hadn’t really thought jimin would agree to relay his message for him, but he still had to try, just in case. 

namjoon doesn’t know why asking taehyung to have sex with him is more nerve-wracking than the actual prospect of having sex with taehyung, but it absolutely is. maybe he should just text him? no. that feels oddly too informal. a handwritten note? nope, that would be plain ridiculous. 

namjoon knows he’s going to have to just suck it up and say it, when he sees him. he knows that’s what he has to do, but that doesn’t mean he can’t quietly freak out about it until he actually does. 

whatever. it’s fine. it’ll be fine. 

namjoon’s not going to stress himself out about this. 

everything’s fine. it’s all good. 

jimin made some serious progress today and namjoon is going to get to fuck taehyung. 

everything is _great_. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

namjoon really does have a fantastic day, all things considered. 

his cookie quest reveals that someone else in the building knows about the secret stash too and it’s thrilling to wonder who it might be. 

it’s a beautiful day out so he enjoys his leisurely cycle home thoroughly. he gets to cycle through the city streets in the late evening sunshine thinking fondly of all the great things that have happened to him so far today. he has, he realizes with a jolt, kissed almost his whole group today. and he’s probably going to get to kiss taehyung tonight. he must look like a complete idiot, grinning hugely to himself as he cycles by cars and pedestrians who barely spare him a glance but would probably judge him if they looked close enough. he wouldn’t care if they did. no one knows and understands this feeling, this joy, other than the people he’s heading home to. he smiles wider and cycles faster. 

on a whim, he decides to stop by the convenience store to grab some snacks because he feels like something sweet, maybe some ice cream. he’s standing over the freezer still trying to pick which one he wants, his other six choices already made, when someone latches themselves to his side and he almost tips over into the freezer in fright. 

“ooh, sorry hyung.” there’s hands steadying him, familiar tattooed fingers. “i didn’t mean to bump into you. i guess i got too excited,” jungkook says. 

by what, namjoon wonders. by ice cream? he looks jungkook up and down and thinks maybe he’s still riding an endorphin high because it looks like he just came from the gym. he’s dressed all in black, his hair damp and pushed back under his black baseball cap. he’s got a mask on so all namjoon can properly see of him is his eyes and the gently swinging lines of silver hoops in his earlobes. 

namjoon drops the melona bar he’d been holding. 

jungkook bends automatically to scoop it up and hand it back to him. 

“how did you -” namjoon starts, but jungkook’s readily apparent excitement doesn’t allow him to let him finish, apparently. 

“sejin-hyung was driving me home and i saw your bike outside.” he’s basically vibrating in place. namjoon is kind of concerned. “will you come back with us? sejin-hyung will put your bike in the back. will you come home with me?” he asks, standing way too close and talking quick and hushed. 

namjoon realizes his mistake now. 

he’d been so very excited about kissing jimin and seokjin and yoongi and hoseok, so fixated then on the prospect of getting to kiss taehyung too that his brain had just glossed right over the part where jungkook exists. and looks like this. 

namjoon has to grip the side of the freezer for support because in that moment he understands on a level that he hadn’t previously that at some point in the probably not too distant future he’s going to get to kiss jungkook and appropriately, his knees instantly and completely give out from under him. 

jungkook grabs for him with quick, strong hands. 

“hyung, what? are you okay? did you forget to eat again?” his excitement has become concern and neither of those expressions are easy for namjoon to deal with, due to the fact that they are performed on jungkook’s face. which is right there. looking the way it does. he reaches blindly to shut the freezer and turns away immediately to head for the counter. 

“hyung is fine, jungkook. just got a little dazed for a second. i’ve eaten, don’t worry,” he says, very studiously watching the cashier scan the barcodes of their snacks so he doesn’t have to look at jungkook instead. 

“okay, good,” is murmured from somewhere up close, just behind his shoulder. “but will you? come home with me?” 

namjoon would laugh, if he didn’t feel like screaming instead. 

“sure. of course, jungkook-ah,” he says, taking the plastic bag from the cashier and bowing his thanks. 

“cool,” jungkook says, almost skipping beside him and namjoon has to concentrate very hard on not walking into the door instead of through it. 

when they get outside, sejin-hyung is already securing namjoon’s bike to the rack on the back of their van. he smiles at namjoon and greets him without saying anything else, probably because it’s entirely obvious to him and literally everyone else that whatever jungkook wants, jungkook gets. especially if namjoon is involved. 

they climb into the very back together and jungkook twists in his seat so he’s mostly facing namjoon and holds out grabby hands until namjoon passes him the bag of snacks. he absent-mindedly reaches up to tug his mask off and namjoon reaches for his phone with an urgency he has not felt in a long time. 

he pulls up his kkt chat with seokjin and as quickly and calmly as he can, types out a message that says, simply, ‘ _help me._ ’ 

instantly, seokjin replies with a string of question marks. namjoon knew he could depend on his hyung to be there for him in this time of need. 

‘ _jungkook is hot_ ,’ he sends back. 

and then he has to retract his previous statement when all he receives in response is a block of laughing emojis. and then, to add insult to injury, a final message that just reads ‘ _good look dealing with that, finally. i’ll remember you fondly._ ’ he added a kissy face emoji. because he’s the fucking worst. how is namjoon supposed to continue to function when he’s sitting next to jungkook, terrified by the prospect of getting to kiss him and also now thinking about kissing seokjin? 

namjoon curses this hyung and sets his phone to ‘do not disturb’, which is ironic considering how all he is right now is disturbed. 

“what can i have?” jungkook asks when he has put his phone away and it’s instinct that makes namjoon look at him, because it’s certainly not something he does on purpose. 

jungkook is holding the bag open and looking down into it but not reaching for anything and namjoon doesn’t want to embarrass him by pointing out that he’s just asked the stupidest question in the history of the world because the answer is so obvious. he can have whatever he wants. he can have anything he wants. namjoon will do everything within his power to give him everything he wants and if there’s things he desires that fall outside that category, then namjoon will learn how to get him those, too.

jungkook lifts his eyes when he feels namjoon look at him. 

“hi hyung,” he says, smiling in that way he does where he’s not grinning widely and that’s what makes it so terrible, because he’s smiling small, softly instead and namjoon thinks, only briefly, about flinging himself out of a moving car. 

“you’re uh - you’re in a good mood today, jungkook-ah. did you have a good day? did something exciting happen?” 

jungkook smile gets a tiny little bit bigger. it’s terrible. he ties the handles of the snack bag into a perfect knot without looking and sets it carefully aside. namjoon is in so much trouble. where is his ‘fighting’ spirit when he’s the one in need? the whole universe has abandoned him, it seems. while he’s locked up in a small space with jungkook. he wonders if it’s too late to start praying. 

“i’m glad you asked, hyung,” jungkook says and namjoon almost, very almost does the sign of the cross over himself. “look at this.” 

jungkook takes his phone out of his hoodie pocket and thumbs to something and then holds his phone out across the space between their seats until it’s basically shoved in namjoon’s face. he has to lean back to actually make out what’s on the screen. 

“is this … a hand-drawn spread sheet?” it’s hard to tell it’s hand-drawn, honestly, because it’s basically perfect. that’s how namjoon knows jungkook drew it. 

“yeah. yoongi-hyung tried to tell me there’s some kind of software that makes them for you, but i didn’t have time for all that,” jungkook says, sounding very serious about it, “so i just made it by hand. quicker. plus this way i could customize it.” 

now that he mentions it, namjoon notices a lot of cute little sketched emojis scattered throughout the squares. all the squares are filled with small images of some kind, actually, except for the rows across the top and side, which both list all of their names. 

wait. 

“jungkook, is this -” 

“yep,” jungkook says happily, close to grinning now. “it’s a bangtan bingo spread sheet. and look hyung, you’re winning!” 

namjoon closes his eyes and starts to count to ten in his head.

his curiosity gets the better of him at ‘2.’ 

a lot of the squares that have been filled in already feature the smiling purple devil emoji. in some places, it’s joined by the huge eyed emoji or elsewhere, the bottoming emoji and sometimes a question mark. there’s a handful of eggplant emojis that namjoon quickly glances past. he sees that, just like jungkook had said, his intersecting rows are the closest to being filled. he also notes, somewhat helplessly, that his and jungkook’s squares are filled in with the ‘soon’ emoji, the heart eyes emoji and the flame emoji. 

namjoon puts his head back against the seat rest and closes his eyes again. jungkook, merciful for once, is silent. 

for, by namjoon’s count, eleven seconds. 

“so like,” jungkook starts and it horrifies namjoon to note that he can hear the pouty little twist of jungkook’s mouth. he’s probably not going to make it home alive. it’s fine, he decides, today was probably the highlight of his existence to date anyway. at least he’ll go out like a hero. he hopes yoongi makes bangtan bingo in his stead. it’s what he’d want. 

“just to recap,” jungkook continues when namjoon doesn’t say anything. he still can’t bring himself to look at jungkook. “you kicked this whole thing off with hobi-hyung. good choice, hyung. maybe not who i’d have chosen if i were you; some might argue it would be the sensible and proper thing to do to start with the youngest and then do whatever, but still, a solid start. i guess." namjoon can actually hear jungkook's jaw clenching. god, the muscle in his jaw flexes so nicely when he's mad. namjoon wonders why anyone ever calls him smart, because he's clearly a fucking idiot. he doesn't deserve to kiss jungkook. "and then seokjin hyung next. that was a wild card, i have to tell you. i thought you’d have to work up to that for sure. yoongi hyung was pretty predictable. sometimes i’m surprised when i see you two not making out, honestly. hobi again was a nice touch. way to mix it up and keep it fresh, hyung. and then jimin. but you didn’t see that one coming, huh? and yet i hear you still handled it beautifully. so all in all, a pretty stellar performance so far, hyung.” 

when namjoon cracks an eye open to check, his worst fears are confirmed. jungkook’s phone is nowhere to be seen, now. he’d had that list memorized. namjoon is definitely not making it back to the house in one piece. 

“jungkook -” namjoon starts to say, looking at him properly now and wanting, bizarrely, to apologize for not having had time to kiss him yet today. he wants to apologize for not kissing him on other days, too. most of all, he wants to kiss him right now. 

but again, jungkook interrupts him. because he is a brat. the most excruciatingly attractive brat namjoon has ever come across, to be exact. taehyung doesn’t count because he’s pretty well behaved in comparison. that’s how bad jungkook is. an actual demon comes off looking well in comparison. 

“i’m just wondering, hyung,” he says loudly. firm. “i’m wondering if there’s a reason behind your game plan here being one that targets me specifically? because you’ve kissed everyone else and you’re going home to kiss taehyung right now and i can’t help but feel - if you’ll excuse my language - totally fucking shafted by this sequence of events, hyung.” 

jungkook gets this from yoongi, namjoon knows. he is all too familiar with this side of them. they’re loud about any kind of perceived slight or injustice they come across and that part of it is - according to yoongi at least - namjoon’s own influence on them both. but when it comes to wrong-doings they feel they themselves are the victim of, they get pouty. they whine. they, on occasion, stamp their feet. and that’s pure min yoongi. he’s mature beyond all their years combined almost all of the time, but on this one special kind of occasion, he’s a grousing toddler. 

and jungkook has always made the best kind of understudy for all of them. 

it should be annoying. it should be frustrating. it should be exasperating at absolute best. 

which is why it always dismays namjoon that he finds it nothing but utterly fucking adorable, instead. sometimes the two of them do it in unison and then it’s all namjoon can do not to roll around on the floor and shriek in delight. 

“jungkook,” namjoon starts. 

he is once again cut off. maybe he should start raising his hand. 

“it’s just that it’s not like i’ve been making myself scarce, hyung. i know i made the very stupid mistake of going out early this morning when you decided to help yourself to a hyung line buffet, but it’s not like you told me your plans, which you could have. like would it have been that difficult to shoot me a quick ‘hey come help me sexually devastate all our hyungs and then maybe you can have a little sexual devastation, as a treat, because you’re a good boy, jungkook, hyung is proud of you and wants to kiss you’ text? like is that really so ...” 

jungkook is somehow grumbling petulantly and lecturing namjoon at the same time. he also still looks the way he looks, when namjoon glances away and then back at him, just to make sure. and namjoon has seen jungkook look all kinds of ways, all of them hot somehow. but today it’s worse, it’s the worst it’s ever been and namjoon doesn’t know if it’s because jungkook just keeps on getting hotter all the time or if it might maybe have something to do with the fact that he’s whining about namjoon not having kissed him when namjoon has wanted to do just that almost every minute of every day for a really, really long time now. and not just in his waking hours, either. a lot of his dreams are heavily jungkook-focused. it’s a problem. jungkook is a problem. jungkook is also still pouting at namjoon. 

“... and i was in the building almost all afternoon. you could have been making out with jimin and me in your studio, but no. i have to get a four page long message about it from jimin while i’m in the middle of my workout. do you know how dangerous that is, hyung?” jungkook is saying all of this very seriously, with his big, wide eyes and namjoon can’t do anything but nod. “i could have dropped a weight on my foot. i could have broken a bone. our whole tour could have been derailed and then the fans would turn against us and big hit would go bankrupt and the korean economy would collapse. so many jobs lost, hyung. children starving. all because you decided you didn’t want to kiss me today. can you live with that on your conscience, hyung? because this might just be a me thing, but i don’t think i could cope with being responsible for so much misery and ruin.” 

namjoon blinks. 

and then he blinks again, harder this time. 

but jungkook is still staring at him. patiently waiting. for … what? for him to respond? where does he even begin? 

namjoon sits forward and reaches for jungkook, leans in. 

and jungkook leans back so he can’t reach him. 

“hyung,” he says, scandalized, “did you just try to kiss me?” he puts his hand to his throat as if to clutch at his metaphorical pearls. 

“yes?” namjoon sits back in his seat, confused and unhappy. “can’t i do that?” 

jungkook crosses his arms over his chest. god, his biceps are incredible. namjoon wants to put his legs over those shoulders so, so badly. 

“i don’t know, hyung. can’t you? because it seems like you haven’t wanted to so far. why would you want to now?” 

this man is insufferable. he’s going to drive namjoon insane and he won’t even know whether it’s because he’s so hot or out of sheer incredulity at his antics. 

“jungkook. ‘guk,” namjoon says. or more accurately - pleads. "jungkook-ah. of course i want to kiss you. who wouldn’t want to kiss you?” 

“people who have five other people they’d rather be kissing, i guess,” jungkook says, shrugging as if he doesn’t care even when his face says the exact opposite. 

namjoon sits forward again and he doesn’t try to kiss jungkook again, but he does reach for his hands. jungkook, mercifully, lets him take them. 

“jungkook,” namjoon says, wondering how jungkook can’t hear even in only the way he says his name how much he loves him. how much he wants him. jungkook’s eyes slide to his and namjoon strokes his thumbs across the backs of jungkook’s hands. “baby.” 

( “ah hyung,” jungkook says, frowning at him but leaning closer. “hyung, that’s cheating.” )

“baby,” namjoon says again, entirely undeterred by jungkook’s protests, “i want to kiss you all the time. i wanted to kiss you all day today. and all day yesterday. and for all of last week. it’s a pretty blanket state of existence for me, jungkook. it covers several years, at least.” 

the problem, as namjoon sees it, is that he wants to kiss jungkook so much and so often that it has become merely his base means of existence. if he’s breathing, he wants to kiss jungkook. and it has become such an integral truth for him that he sometimes forgets to pay direct attention to it; ends up leaving it whirring away on its own like a background process because if he acknowledged it as often as it’s true, he’d never get a single other thing done. as usual, with matters that concern jeon jungkook, namjoon has chosen the route of simple self preservation. 

“i’m sorry i was busy and distracted today, but isn’t that why all of this is so exciting? you can kiss any of your hyungs whenever you want. you don’t need to wait for me, jungkook.” 

jungkook flips their hands, gets namjoon’s hands palm up and starts to trace the lines there with his fingertips. 

“but i _was_ waiting for you, hyung,” he murmurs, looking at their hands instead of looking at namjoon. “of course it’s cool that we all get to kiss each other whenever we want to, now. but i haven’t gotten to kiss you yet. and i want to, hyung.” namjoon closes his hands, traps jungkook’s fingers until he looks up at him. he’s biting at the side of his mouth, his patented ‘no i’m definitely not nervous but also i might maybe be a little bit nervous’ tic. “hyung, you can’t tell the others, but i’ve wanted to kiss you most of all.” 

namjoon swoons, he thinks. he’s light-headed and everything is very bright but nothing is nearly as blinding to him as jungkook is, whispering this confession into the space between them. 

“it doesn’t count as favouritism,” jungkook insists. “it’s not that. there’s things i want to do first with the other hyungs so it’s okay, it’s still fair,” he says like namjoon has just challenged him to a debate on this and he’s determined to win. “but i think about kissing you the most. i thought about kissing you before i even knew i wanted to kiss everyone else, too.” 

and logically, all of them are that for someone. all of them have someone they first thought about that way, someone who started the chain of events in their head long before anything could occur to make it happen. 

it’s not absurd to think that namjoon would be the beginning of this for someone. for one of them, or maybe more. 

that’s absolutely possible. likely, even. 

but it’s jungkook. namjoon was where and why this started for _jungkook_ and that feels like too much for some reason. that has namjoon wondering if maybe he did in fact throw himself out of the car when he’d thought about doing so and all of this is some kind of coma induced hallucination. 

“jungkook,” namjoon says, with utmost urgency, “you can kiss me whenever you want to. you can do anything you ever feel like doing to me and that’s a scarily huge thing to say to someone but i have no problem at all with saying it to you, because i know you and i know that you only want to do good things, great things, so do them with me whenever you want to, however you’d like to.” 

“really, hyung?” jungkook asks and again, namjoon has to stop himself from pointing out that this question is also a total waste of time. namjoon would rather waste time with jungkook than do most other things with most other people, so it’s not that difficult to let it slide. 

“do you want to be my last first kiss, ‘guk?” namjoon offers, because that would be fitting, for him too. that’s kind of a big deal, now that namjoon thinks about it for the first time ever. “after taehyung,” namjoon glosses over that part. he can get back to freaking out about that later, when he’s done freaking out about kissing jungkook. “after that, do you want me to come find you? you can be my bangtan bingo. you’d be my prize for winning, too. the best prize. there’s nothing else i want as much as i want you, jungkook-ah.” 

jungkook goes completely still for a second, everything just freezing up like someone hit the pause button on him. and then he leans in far enough that he can whisper into namjoon’s ear. 

“hyung the thing is, i don’t think i can wait that long. so how about you kiss me now and we both pretend you didn’t and then you come kiss me again after taehyung. i can doctor the spread sheet, no one has to know, hyung.” 

when jungkook pulls away again his cheeks are starting to pink and he’s refusing to look at namjoon, like if they don’t make eye contact no one can make him acknowledge what he just said. 

“jungkook-ah,” namjoon says and he lets his voice go a little stern, gets a little leader-y for effect. jungkook pouts. namjoon is stuck in a car that’s stuck in seoul’s rush hour traffic with a pouting jeon jungkook. his fate has been decided for him. “jungkook. the next fifteen minutes never happened, okay?” 

jungkook’s eyes go huge. absurdly so. 

“fifteen minutes?” he asks faintly. 

“fifteen minutes,” namjoon confirms. “and when i come find you tomorrow morning, you’re going to need to clear a few hours of your schedule for me. does that work for you?” 

jungkook nods, still looking dazed, still staring at namjoon like he’s expecting him to say ‘just kidding!’ 

instead, namjoon leans over and fiddles with the jungkook’s seat settings until he gets him lying back as much as he can. and then he pulls his own sweater off and moves out of his seat to straddle jungkook in his, instead. jungkook looks at his own hands on namjoon’s thighs like he’s shocked by them, like he didn’t realize he had hands until now. 

“fifteen minutes, jungkook,” namjoon reminds him, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the divider is up behind the driver’s seat. sejin-hyung probably can’t see much with them all the way in the back and about to be lying down, but still. namjoon respects him a lot, he wouldn’t like to scar him for life. 

jungkook reaches up to tug his cap off and throws it across the car. he shakes his shoulders out like he does before they go onstage and namjoon grins at him. 

and then namjoon leans down and jungkook’s arms are coming up around his neck and he feels jungkook tremble underneath him when their lips meet, even his voice quivering when he makes a small sound, something high and shaky. he’s such a sweet boy, so very lovely and charming and gentle and namjoon touches him like he’s something precious because he very much is. he kisses him carefully, a series of soft presses of lips and jungkook meets him for every one, sighs through his nose just like he does when he throws himself down onto his bed after long days or stressful nights. 

it’s just what namjoon needs, honestly. it’s exactly how he thought this would go, with jungkook. it’s simple, it’s easy, it’s slow and honeyed but precise, neat. 

and then jungkook closes one hand around the back of namjoon’s neck right as his other hand grabs at namjoon’s ass and grips. 

and then namjoon is almost hiccuping around jungkook’s tongue, because it’s pressed into namjoon’s mouth to touch his tongue and namjoon feels like he just missed a step on the stairs or maybe fell down several entire flights of stairs because what he’s feeling seems a lot like the symptoms of a concussion and jungkook is just touching him more, kissing him harder, grabbing namjoon’s hips to hold him down so jungkook can grind up into him and namjoon has kissed a lot of people, he’s kissed a lot of people just today, but this one is the first time he’s felt completely out of control because jungkook is just holding him where he wants him and _taking_. 

jungkook must notice his pause, because he pulls back just far enough that namjoon can properly see his still closed eyes, his whole expression something somehow dreamy and fraught at the same time. 

“sorry, am -” he all but slurs the words between their still touching lips, “is this -” 

namjoon closes his eyes again and tugs at the hem of jungkook’s hoodie and tshirt until he can get his hands up underneath them both, slide them up around the curve of his waist until they’re jammed between jungkook’s back and the seat. 

“this is perfect,” namjoon says, kissing jungkook between each word. “take whatever you need, baby,” he murmurs and then he nips at jungkook’s bottom lip, just barely, just enough to have jungkook’s eyebrows furrowing and get his hands moving again. 

jungkook pulls him down and picks up exactly where he left off. 

namjoon does his best to keep up. 

_/_/_/

at somewhere around the the nine minute mark, namjoon has to press his forehead to the upholstery of the seat and beg for reprieve. 

“please, jungkook, hyung needs ..” he needs to come, is what he needs. but he’s about to and he can’t. there’s only so many rules he’s comfortable with breaking, even if it’s for jungkook and maybe namjoon is romanticising things a bit too much as usual, but he wants to save his first real bangtan orgasm for taehyung. “i need a minute. just … let me breathe for a second. you’re so -” 

when he lifts his head, jungkook is looking up at him, his eyelids low with satisfaction. his poorly concealed smirk loudly projecting his pride. he makes no move to take his hands off namjoon’s ass.

“i’m so?” jungkook prompts and namjoon doesn’t think twice about putting his mouth to the ball of jungkook’s shoulder and biting him through his hoodie. 

“oh. you wanna eat me up, hyung?” jungkook asks, his voice so low that namjoon’s thighs clench reflexively around his hips. 

if anyone here is getting devoured, it’s namjoon. jungkook lured him deep into the woods with the breadcrumb trail of his sweet little protests, his uwu pouting and now he has namjoon exactly where he wants him and all of that is nowhere to be seen because jungkook has decided to pull him apart, instead. namjoon is mixing up his fairy tales but that’s understandable, he thinks, when he can’t remember how to spell his own name. 

“at this point, i would just like to survive this encounter,” he says plainly. and “please,” he adds, because he really, really likes the look that crosses jungkook’s face when his hyung asks him ‘please’ from the perch jungkook is holding him on in his lap. 

“i’ll see what i can do, hyung,” jungkook says, one side of his mouth lifting into something like a smile but much, much darker. 

namjoon leans back in and willingly, deliberately walks toward his own doom. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

namjoon’s legs give out again when he tries to step out of the car. jungkook catches him again and giggles this time, sounding as drunk as namjoon feels. 

in the lift, namjoon risks a glance at jungkook. he has his cap back on again, his mask hanging from one ear. he’s a little flushed, but other than that he looks entirely put together. namjoon feels like he looks like he just got mauled. he side eyes himself in the mirrored walls and yep, that’s about the sum of it. 

“how am i both really sad that we only got to make out and also incredibly grateful that we only got to make out?” he asks, not really expecting an answer because he doesn’t think there is one. 

jungkook just smiles at him, all small and sweet and composed. but namjoon knows better, now. namjoon just became a living testament to exactly how untrue all of those things are when jungkook lets loose. 

“that was just the warm up, hyung,” he says and namjoon huffs an incredulous laugh at him. 

“for what? taehyung? or tomorrow morning?” 

jungkook grins at him then, showing him his teeth. 

“yes, hyung,” is all he says and then he’s stopping out of the elevator on their floor and keying in the code. 

as soon as both their shoes are off, he walks off without a backwards glance, without so much as a ‘see you later.’ 

“you don’t have anything to say to me?” namjoon has to ask, because he’s truly surprised for the first time today. 

jungkook pauses and looks back at him. he shrugs. 

“i’ve got a kind of pressing issue, hyung” he says, glancing down his own body helpfully. “and you’re off limits, but there’s still two other hyungs that are already unlocked.” 

namjoon feels kind of used. but namjoon did tell jungkook he could use him. and namjoon also, he finds, really likes both knowing and feeling exactly how jungkook used him. 

“that’s fair,” he decides, even though he doesn’t think it’s fair, he thinks it’s fucking spectacular. he gets to go get ready to spend the night with taehyung and he also gets to know that yoongi and hoseok will take care of jungkook until namjoon can do that himself tomorrow. he nods and takes off towards the kitchen, snack bag swinging from his hand. 

“oh and hyung?” jungkook calls after him. namjoon stops and turns to look at him. “i love you, hyung,” jungkook says, grinning hugely now. beaming at him. 

“hyung too. i love you too, jungkook,” namjoon calls back and then he watches jungkook until he disappears from sight. 

just for a little while. 

just for tonight. 

just until namjoon can seal this whole thing by offering himself up to the devil himself. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

after ten minutes of fussing with the freezer, rearranging the ice creams he’s putting there alphabetically and then by flavour, finally by color because he thinks hobi will find that aesthetically pleasing, namjoon can’t think of anything else he can do to kill time. 

he walks towards taehyung’s bedroom like a man going to the guillotine. he drags his feet. he pauses to inspect artwork he’s already intimately familiar with the details of. he hopes, fervently, that taehyung is still out and won’t answer when namjoon knocks on his door. 

he also knocks on the door very quietly. just in case. 

it swings open immediately. 

taehyung is home. he’s right there. he’s wearing a denim shirt that’s buttoned all the way up to his throat and a pair of loose-fitting, flowy white muslin pants. his perm is slowly falling out and it only looks better and better the more it does. namjoon kind of wants to turn around and run away. 

he forces himself to do what he came here to do, instead. 

“hey,” he says. it’s going well so far, but then taehyung smiles at him and he starts to sweat. he balls his hands into fists. “hi. sorry to um. bother you.” 

taehyung’s smile only grows. 

“you’re not bothering me,” taehyung says, reaching out to take namjoon by the hand and lead him into his bedroom. namjoon almost glances behind himself to try and signal someone for help, but he knows there’s no one there. he also knows that nothing and no one can help him, now. 

“what’s up? did you need something, hyung?” 

they’re sitting side by side on taehyung’s bed and taehyung hasn’t let go of his by now very sweaty hand. namjoon feels like he’s fourteen again and about to have his first kiss. 

“uh, no. i, um,” the worst part is, taehyung doesn’t even laugh at him or in any other way acknowledge that he’s a goddamn mess. he just sits there, very patiently and waits for namjoon to finish his sentence. “i just came to tell you that i’m next.” he gets it out in a quick rush. and then realizes he hasn’t exactly been clear. “for fucking. to be exact. like … you know how you’ve already had sex with hoseok and jungkook and yoongi? well, that. i’m next. to be had. by you. if that’s okay. if you’re not busy. and if you want to.” 

taehyung just keeps looking at him with that faint smile still on his face. namjoon is going to throw himself out the window. he actually stands up to do just that, but taehyung stops him by wrapping his arms around namjoon’s leg and leaning his head in against his hip. 

“hyung,” he says, still so fucking patient and hot and _taehyung_. “if i want to?” 

namjoon looks down at him and then looks literally everywhere else. there’s a crack in the corner of taehyung’s mirror, he wonders if he knows. 

“well. you had said you wanted to fuck all of us. and i think it’s mostly been established that we all want to fuck each other but there’s a lot of variables to consider with seven people in play. like, you might have decided that you can’t rule out at some point wanting to have sex with me. what you said doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to do it now, or even any time soon, or actually any time at all and so -” 

“namjoon.” taehyung has always been pretty good at stopping namjoon in his tracks with just a single word. most of the time even a look will do. all of the time, his face manages it all on its own. “hyung. i’ve been sitting here for three hours waiting for you.” 

“oh,” namjoon says, wondering if it might be okay if he was to touch taehyung’s hair. the problem is that he knows it would be okay with taehyung, but he’s not sure if it would be okay with him. he’s not sure he can be okay after that. “you knew it was my turn?” 

“no,” taehyung says, still staring up at him. namjoon wants to touch him so, so badly. “i knew it wasn’t jimin. and seokjin went out earlier and said not to expect him back until really late, so i kinda guessed. but i didn’t know for sure until just now.” 

“and that’s … okay? you’re fine with me being next?” 

taehyung almost-frowns at him. 

“what have i been doing all this time that otherwise self-assured seeming people become walking balls of self consciousness when the time comes to sleep with me? is it something i said? what am i doing wrong, hyung?” 

namjoon can’t hold back any longer, he has to touch taehyung even if it might kill him. he pushes his fingers through the long hair on the top of his head and holds his breath when taehyung leans into it. 

“you’re not doing anything wrong,” namjoon tells him. “that’s kind of the problem? you’re the hottest person i’ve ever seen in my life and you keep doing things and saying things that only make you somehow even hotter than you already were and i’m just a man, taehyung. i am just one man and i feel like it’s going to take six of us to figure out how to handle you even a little bit.” 

“wow, i must be a real handful,” taehyung says and he’s smiling again now. he’s so hot namjoon wants to cry. how does a face look like that. why does it have to be a face that namjoon can’t get away from. “that kind of reminds me of this terrible situation i find myself in, where this really hot hyung i have had a crush on for my entire adult life seems determined to never ever acknowledge that fact. and the problem is that on top of being really handsome and sweet, he’s also the smartest and most hardworking person i know, so if he sets his mind to something, he ends up doing it well. too well, in this case.” 

“wait,” namjoon says, his brain still caught on almost all of that. “you had a crush on me? you still have a crush on me? you think i’m handsome?” namjoon really needs to make an appointment with a knee doctor sometime very soon. only taehyung’s tightly wound grip on his thigh keeps him on his feet. 

“hyung,” taehyung sighs, “the others have given me some hope, over the years. there was something said, some kind of look exchanged that made me think ‘maybe, just maybe.’ but you? you gave me nothing. i’ve been sitting here wondering if you were off somewhere trying to find a way out of this.” 

“i gave you nothing?” namjoon didn’t know his voice could go that high. “i’ve spent almost our entire careers losing my train of thought the minute you walk into a room. you distract me from everything, all the time. i feel like i stop working when you’re around, like i have to concentrate really hard to remember how to be a person because sometimes it seems like all i am is someone or something who would do anything to get to touch you.” 

taehyung pouts up at him and namjoon dimples at him in retaliation.

“you never noticed me looking right back at you, though. i knew you probably wanted me, but that’s not enough. you have to know that i want you too. and you never let me show you that. you never looked for it, hyung.” 

“taehyung,” namjoon takes his face in his hands and tries his hardest not to notice that they’re trembling. “you heard me when i came in here. i can barely string two words together when you’re near me looking like this. being like this. i might be smart sometimes, but i’m an absolute idiot when you’re around.” 

for some reason, this makes taehyung grin at him. jesus christ his jawline is so sharp, curves at such a lovely angle. his cheekbones would make angels weep. and then burn down a building. seokjin was absolutely right. 

“oh no, that’s so cute, hyung,” he says, starting to laugh. his laugh has always been one of namjoon’s absolute favourites; so low and sincere. namjoon loves hearing him laugh. namjoon loves him. “if i make you dumb already, what’s going to happen when we fuck?” 

namjoon ponders this. 

“it might make me smarter,” he reasons and they both laugh at him. it’s nice. it’s all kinds of wonderful. 

“well, that’s terrifying,” taehyung decides. “but i’m very willing to help you test that hypothesis if you need a research partner.” he’s not even leering at namjoon, but he still feels very leered at. that’s the taehyung effect at work. 

“oh yeah, talk science to me, baby,” he says, still giggling a little and he’d definitely thought he’d be crying before he’d be laughing in here tonight, but it’s also not a surprise to be reminded that sure, taehyung is definitely the hottest person on earth and probably an actual demon, but also one of namjoon’s best friends. 

“hey,” he says, letting the fingertips of his left hand trip slowly down the side of taehyung’s neck and tuck themselves under the collar of his shirt. “i was kind of terrified, thinking about this. like, i panicked through every minute of today that i didn’t spend kissing someone or panicking about kissing someone. but now that i’m here, i’m just … excited. i’m really excited to be here with you.” 

taehyung beams at him. namjoon’s eyes only water slightly. maybe he’s getting stronger from prolonged exposure. 

“me too, hyung. thank you for coming. thank you for wanting to be here.” 

they just smile at each other stupidly, cutely for a full minute and then namjoon realizes that they get to have sex now. 

“oh,” he says, “but we can bang now!” 

taehyung laughs at him again and again, it’s a lovely sound. 

“yes we can, hyung.” 

“okay, great,” namjoon says, stepping away from taehyung and trying to gather whatever wits he has left about himself. “i’m gonna go shower, i cycled home and i’m sweaty and gross. i’ll be back in like … ten minutes?” 

“sure, hyung. take your time,” taehyung tells him, lying back onto his bed and picking up a book off his bedside table. “i’ll be here when you’re ready.” 

he’s so hot. he is so! hot!!! and namjoon gets to come back here and touch him. 

he doesn’t run the entire way to his room, but he might as well have. it’s a close thing. 

he cleans up and even makes a quick pitstop to dry his wet hair off until it’s only mostly damp but still makes it back to taehyung’s room with at least two minutes to spare. 

taehyung drops his book when he throws the door to his room open and then namjoon realizes why that is. he forgot to get dressed again. 

“uh, wow, hyung,” taehyung says, open mouthed and staring. 

“taehyung,” namjoon says urgently, closing and locking the door behind himself and crossing the room as quickly as he can. “taehyung, you have to fuck me like, right now. i think i’m getting dumber.” 

taehyung starts unbuttoning his shirt quickly and neatly. 

“i can’t say that’s the most sophisticated way i’ve ever been propositioned, but you definitely get points for uniqueness. the desperation is also pretty compelling, hyung.” 

namjoon kneels up onto the bed and reaches for the waistband of taehyung’s pants. they slide right off his hips and namjoon is not surprised but still delighted to find that taehyung isn’t wearing any underwear. in no time at all he’s naked too and then there’s nothing stopping namjoon from climbing up over him and pushing his hands up into taehyung’s pillows as he presses their mouths together. 

“bingo,” he whispers. 

“huh?” taehyung asks, the question not so much a word as it is a sound, a touch that namjoon feels when taehyung parts his lips. 

namjoon says nothing, just kisses taehyung until he forgets he asked anything at all. 

kissing taehyung is incomparable to any of the other kisses namjoon has been a part of today or any other other day. taehyung kisses well, which was probably a given. his mouth is skilled and patient and slow but so, so serious. namjoon doesn’t feel rushed, doesn’t feel like he just jumped out of a plane and can’t find the cord for his parachute the way he had when jungkook was taking him apart at the mouth, but his chest is still set heaving pretty quickly. kissing taehyung feels deliberate. purposeful. namjoon feels like he’s doing something very important, when he seeks taehyung’s tongue with his own. 

they spend what feels like hours like that, just rolling back and forth on taehyung’s sheets, namjoon going with it when taehyung pushes him down onto his back and then going with it again when taehyung decides he wants namjoon on top of him, blanketing him instead. 

their touches are just like the kisses they’re sharing; languid and exploratory. it’s the opposite of the sense of absolute urgency namjoon feels when he touches hoseok, but he wants it just as much. it feels like they’ve got all the time in the world and nowhere else to be, nothing else they’d rather be doing. 

“hey,” taehyung says eventually, when they’re lying side by side and both breathing heavy, namjoon trying not to get hypnotised by the way taehyung’s chest rises and falls. “have you thought about how this goes? do you wanna top? bottom? neither? both?” 

namjoon rolls up onto his side and brushes taehyung’s already sweaty bangs back out of his eyes. 

“all of the above. i want to do everything with you. but i haven’t bottomed in a while and i really miss that. plus,” he drops a friendly hand to curl loosely around taehyung’s already mostly hard and incredibly gorgeous cock. “what was that you said about compelling? because wow.” 

“is this a thing? is everyone in this group a secret bottom enthusiast? i mean, i’m down,” taehyung is quick to assure namjoon, “i’m super, super down. but no one has wanted to fuck me yet. is that weird, hyung?” 

namjoon shrugs. “i don’t think so? i think you have a really nice dick and we’ve all known that and thought about it so it ends up pretty naturally climbing our lists of priorities, but they’re long lists, tae. i don’t think you’re going to find yourself hard pressed to get fucked. speaking of, do you have toys?” 

taehyung gestures at his bedside table with a contemplative look on his face. 

“how about this; you pick your favourite toy and i fuck you with that while you fuck me? or we can do the other way around?” namjoon offers. he’s easy. it’s taehyung. if he just wanted to cuddle and hold hands all night namjoon would still lose his mind about that. 

“no, that’s -” taehyung is already making a lot of noise at his drawers. “that sounds perfect, sign me up, hyung.” 

he produces a mostly realistic looking dildo that’s just a little bigger than namjoon might have thought and also bright blue, which he is exactly what he would have thought, with taehyung. he also adds a squirty bottle of lube, which namjoon reaches for immediately. 

“will we prep ourselves or each other?” he asks, hoping taehyung will say the latter. he really, really wants to get his fingers in taehyung. 

“uh, each other. duh, hyung,” taehyung says and namjoon can’t deny himself a little fist pump of victory. taehyung laughs at him. 

and then nobody laughs for quite some time. 

they get up on their knees facing each other in the middle of the bed and pass the lube back and forth until they’re both satisfied that they’ve got enough. they keep it close by because they’ll need more eventually, anyway. and then they shuffle closer to one another until they’re pressed completely together; their cocks trapped hot between their bellies. namjoon has never done this before, not exactly like this and he wonders why. it’s ridiculously hot and it would be even if it didn’t involve taehyung, who makes everything that way. 

taehyung syncs up their actions so that everything namjoon does, taehyung does a split second later. namjoon shows taehyung what he likes by doing it to him and taehyung learns and repeats it on namjoon. 

pretty quickly they’re both worked up to three fingers, thumbing at each other’s rims just to feel the clench. namjoon’s stomach is hot and sticky and he can’t even tell which of them is leaking, probably both of them, because instead of pushing back onto the fingers in their asses, they both just use keep pressing in, pushing their fingers deeper and using the palms of their hands to pull one another closer. 

this position is perfect for kissing and namjoon doesn’t remember them pausing in that this entire time. sometimes it’s just taehyung breathing hard against the side of namjoon’s mouth and sometimes it’s namjoon gasping around taehyung’s tongue because of what his fingers are doing, but their lips haven’t parted properly since they started this. 

they’ve been rutting up against each other for too long already, namjoon’s belly clenching up with it and he doesn’t want to stop doing this but if he doesn’t, he’s going to come. he can thank the world’s worst (best) fluffer, jeon jungkook, for that. 

“can we -” he starts to say, but taehyung doesn’t let him finish. 

“oh thank god. please, hyung, i’m so close to coming,” he whispers low and rough against namjoon’s mouth and namjoon has to keep kissing him, just for a moment, just to calm the fuck down. 

“‘kay,” namjoon says eventually, pulling away properly, but not for long and not going far. “thoughts on position?” 

taehyung reaches for a towel and wipes his hand off, tosses it to namjoon so he can do the same. 

“reverse cowgirl is probably the most efficient way to do this,” taehyung says and namjoon agrees with that assessment but he also knows exactly why taehyung is almost-frowning again. “but that way i won’t get to see you and i want to see you. do you think you can reach if you ride me, hyung?” 

namjoon pushes him down onto his back and makes himself comfortable on taehyung’s pelvis, lifting his cock up first so it can rest in the line of namjoon’s ass while he reaches for the lube and starts to get the dildo ready. 

“oh please,” he says, shaking his head at taehyung. “look at these arms, kim taehyung. uselessly long until this very moment.” he grins and taehyung properly frowns at him. 

“uselessly nothing, hyung. your arms are at least 22% of my crush on you. they’re perfect. you’re gorgeous. that’s why i’m insisting on looking at your pretty face while i fuck you smarter.” 

namjoon laughs and reaches behind himself, shows taehyung that he’s got nothing to worry about by running the wet tip of the dildo down over the soft spread of his balls and then lower and lower still. 

“hold yourself open for me,” namjoon says and taehyung is quick to comply. he shifts a little under namjoon and namjoon has to reach back with both hands to find taehyung’s hole with one and hold the dildo steady in position with the other. balancing is the only real challenge, but that’s managed easily enough by how taehyung’s wide spread thighs are anchoring namjoon’s calves to the bed. 

“you wanna go in first or will i?” namjoon asks and taehyung pauses to think about it. 

“logistically,” he begins and namjoon would be embarrassed by how his cock jerks at that if he had literally anyone else under him right now, but taehyung, he knows, will get it. sure enough, he just winks at namjoon. “logistically,” he repeats, with emphasis this time, “i think i need to get you on my cock first and then i can hold myself open for you to get to work. gravity is on your side, here, hyung.” 

that’s true and it’s hot that taehyung thought of it. namjoon wants to kiss him again before he can’t, for a while. 

“come here, come up,” he says, “kiss me please. i’m going to miss that while we’re fucking.” 

“i really don’t think you will,” taehyung warns, but he sits up anyway. he kisses namjoon utterly fucking filthily, unknowingly answering the question of who the hell taught jungkook to kiss like that. god, the thought of the two of them together has namjoon’s whole body locking up under a jolt of pleasure. 

“okay, okay,” taehyung says, though namjoon didn’t say anything. maybe he’s talking to himself. it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things because he’s lying back down and urging namjoon up onto his knees, reaching between namjoon’s legs to grip his own cock. “c’mon, get me inside you, hyung,” he prompts and on any other day namjoon would have something to say about his tone but today he just sits back slowly onto taehyung’s cock and tries not to tear up at how good it feels, instead. 

“fuck,” he swears when he’s sitting as low as he can go. “so big. feels so good in me, taehyung-ah.” 

taehyung gives him a second to get used to it and then he’s pushing his hips up minutely, grinding into namjoon even more. 

“ride me, hyung,” he says and namjoon does. 

he rises back up onto his knees, just a bit, as far as he can go without taehyung’s cock slipping out of him and then drops all the way back down. he gets a few of those long, drawn out strokes in because he probably isn’t going to be able to manage that when he’s fucking taehyung with his dildo. he’s not going to be able to anymore, if he keeps feeling this good. 

“fuck me, hyung,” taehyung says and namjoon does. 

taehyung holds himself open for namjoon to find his hole with his fingers and then slowly work the dildo in while he sits still on taehyung’s hips, keeps taehyung’s cock all the way up inside himself. 

he keeps them both full for a minute, for a long minute when it’s all he can do to breathe and stay as absolutely still as he can because if taehyung’s cock gets anywhere near his prostate right now, it’s game over. he’s missed bottoming and here he is, sitting on taehyung’s big, lovely cock, feeling the strain in taehyung’s thighs, his legs trembling already at the sensation overload of both fucking namjoon and getting fucked himself. 

“good?” namjoon asks and taehyung nods with his eyes closed, with his eyebrows drawn up like he’s in pain. he’s stunning. he’s utterly and completely fucking gorgeous. 

“m’good. go, hyung,” he says and again, namjoon does. 

it’s easier than namjoon had thought it would be, to find a rhythm that works. when he pushes the dildo in deep, he sits up and when he sits back down he pulls it back. sometimes, just to mix it up and really fuck with taehyung, he drops himself right down onto taehyung’s cock and grinds there, pushes the dildo in deep, angling it up into taehyung’s prostate as he does. the first time he does that taehyung honest to god shouts and namjoon would giggle at that if it didn’t make taehyung grab at his hips and pull him down so he can fuck up into him deeper, harder. 

"oh, hyung," taehyung groans up at him, all but writhing underneath namjoon, looking like he's caught in exactly the kind of pleasure that namjoon thinks he deserves always. "you feel so good and you're fucking me so well. hyung takes me so nicely and still works hard to fill me up. you're gorgeous, namjoon hyung. i really want to kiss you right now." 

namjoon feels the same way, feels like maybe if he got to concentrate on kissing taehyung for a second, he wouldn't feel so constantly on the very edge. he's teetering and it's incredible but he doesn't want it to end. he watches taehyung arch and moan underneath him and sucks at his own bottom lip, wishing it was taehyung's instead. 

eventually, namjoon finds that he doesn’t really need taehyung to hold himself open if namjoon holds the base of the dildo down against the sheets and just keeps taehyung trapped between it and himself. this way, taehyung can fuck up into namjoon and then fuck himself down onto the dildo and that seems to really, really work for him, which in turn does the exact same for namjoon. 

“you’re beautiful like this,” namjoon has to devote what feels like all the breath he has left in him to saying. “you’re beautiful always, but this is next level. you’re other-wordly like this. ethereal.” 

taehyung visibly grits his teeth. 

“i’m definitely fucking you smarter, hyung,” he bites out. “but you’re fucking me stupid, i can literally feel my iq drop a point every time you nail my prostate.” 

namjoon laughs and taehyung tries to, too, but ends up choking on the sound instead. he grips hard at namjoon’s thigh, his fingers digging in. 

“m’gonna come, hyung,” he warns or maybe pleads or maybe orders, because when he says it namjoon presses the dildo all the way up inside him and then fucks himself down onto taehyung’s cock with quick, brutal precision until he feels taehyung jerk and start to spill inside him. 

taehyung fucks his own come into namjoon fast and sloppy and reaches out to twist a hand up around namjoon’s cock. it takes maybe four frantic passes of his tight fist up over the leaking head before namjoon is watching himself splatter taehyung’s lovely tanned tummy with his come. namjoon fucks himself on taehyung's slowly softening cock a little more, careful, wet little grinds that are loud in a way that makes namjoon feel like he could come again just listening to it, just watching taehyung watch him from under his eyelashes, looking at him like he's a piece of prey. he is; that's what he feels like. that's what he'd come here for; to let taehyung have him. if he wanted him. and it seems that he did. and judging by the look on his face right now, still does. 

eventually they both settle still and namjoon lets go of the dildo, assumes it slips out. next time he wants to watch, he decides. next time, he wants to get on his belly with his head between taehyung's legs, his arms up over his thighs to hold him down and watch him fuck himself with a toy, close enough to see him clench around it. or maybe he'll get one of the others to do it, so taehyung can't move, can't do anything at all. 

namjoon is still lost in that thought when taehyung wipes the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead and then sits up carefully, loops his arms around namjoon’s waist and tilts his head up so namjoon can lean down and kiss him. 

“that was a great idea and i’m really looking forward to having a lot of creative sex with you, but next time we’re doing missionary. you called it, i missed getting to kiss you,” taehyung says and namjoon lifts his arms up around taehyung’s neck and kisses him until they’ve both had their fill. or as close to it as they can get before they start to get gross and have to get up and shower. 

they shower together, which isn’t new but is also very much new considering they start kissing again and don’t stop until taehyung has had namjoon pressed against the wall of the shower for so long that his knees start to get weak again. 

“did you forget to eat today, hyung?” taehyung asks when they’re towelling off and he’s insisting that namjoon sit down on his bed while he orders them food from his phone. 

which reminds namjoon of something important. 

“i ate, i swear. but i could eat again,” he adds hastily when taehyung raises an eyebrow at him. “hey, i’ve gotta go do something real quick, meet me in the kitchen?” 

taehyung gives him a questioning look but doesn’t say anything, just shrugs and goes to his wardrobe to find some clothes to put on. 

namjoon goes to jungkook’s room dressed in just a pair of taehyung’s soft, loose linen pants. 

he knocks on the door hard and loud and when jungkook opens it he takes jungkook’s face in his hands and kisses him quick and sweet. 

“for your data,” he says and then he kisses jungkook once more, grins at him and goes to find taehyung. 

they eat quickly, both ravenous by the time the food comes and they don’t talk about it, but namjoon follows taehyung back to his room and they end up brushing their teeth side by side in front of his sink. 

taehyung grins at namjoon around his toothbrush when namjoon can’t stop watching him in the mirror. 

when they climb into bed, taehyung pushes all but two of his pillows off the mattress onto the floor and wraps his arms and legs around namjoon, instead. 

“goodnight, hyung. i love you,” he says with his eyes already closed and his nose pressed into the dip of namjoon’s bicep. 

“i love you too, taehyung. sleep well,” namjoon says and then he lies there and looks at taehyung’s peaceful, sleeping face until he eventually must fall asleep too. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

the next morning, namjoon reaches for his phone while taehyung is still sleepily trying to hide his face in namjoon’s armpit. 

there’s two alerts right at the top of his notifications; a screenshot of the bingo spreadsheet from jungkook sent forty minutes ago to the group chat with a wall of firework emojis and a huge crown sticker and a message from yoongi that just says _‘yo what the FUCK’_. it was sent two minutes ago. 

namjoon barely has time to sit up before taehyung’s bedroom door is being all but thrown open. 

“you!” yoongi declares, pointing at the bed. 

“me?” taehyung asks blearily, lifting his head just long enough to look at yoongi. 

“no, not you. you go back to sleep, sweetheart. hyung’s sorry for waking you.” 

taehyung drops his head back down onto the pillow but twists to hide it when he winks at namjoon and then speaks again. 

“you too, hyung. come back to bed, yoongi-hyung,” taehyung says and namjoon actually sees the rage dissolve from yoongi’s face. 

he climbs in next to taehyung and reaches to fix the covers where they’ve slipped down off taehyung’s shoulder. he smiles softly and brushes taehyung’s hair back out of his face. 

and then he lifts his eyes to namjoon and lets them narrow. 

he points at namjoon and then drags the same finger across his own throat. 

honestly, yoongi has both said and mimed worse to namjoon first thing in the morning, so namjoon isn’t too bothered by it. 

he settles back into the bed and figures he’s got time for a quick cuddle session with the daegu boys before his standing appointment with jungkook. 

as namjoon falls asleep, he’s idly wondering if they’re going to need jungkook to draw them up a sex schedule. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title of this chapter is from the song 'long night' by audrey nuna, who rules.


	6. taehyung/seokjin - seeing you got ritualistic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “hey should we keep some of this cake for taehyung? i’m pretty sure it’s his?” 
> 
> seokjin looks down at the half or so cake that’s left in the box. 
> 
> “why did someone buy him a cake?” he wonders, though he doesn’t know why he bothers. 
> 
> “hyung, i once saw a stranger on the street stop to empty out their wallet for him. who knows why anyone does any of the things taehyung inspires them to do?” and if namjoon doesn’t have the answers to that, then those answers probably don’t exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god okay where to even begin. 
> 
> this is so late. like so unbelievably fucking late. i wrestled with it, honestly. at times, it almost won. quarantine brain is weird and unpredictable and i for real have no idea how quickly i'm going to get this finished but know that i am trying my best. 
> 
> after i posted the last chapter and it was 29k i was like "damn that's crazy," and then when i started writing this one i thought to myself "wouldn't it be wild if this chapter was even longer?" and like ... i don't know why i continue to curse myself like this, but i do. 
> 
> this is now officially the longest thing i've ever written. and it's not even done. WITCHCRAFT. DEMONIC ACTIVITY. 
> 
> uh, lots of new tags for this part so please check those before you start reading. i'll explain myself ... never. 
> 
> special shoutout to user 'Onlyhereforbts' because after the last chapter i was thinking about something and then they asked for that something in the comments, so i felt fully justified in providing that something for us all. 
> 
> @ cory: BRACE THYSELF, BRO. 
> 
> @ maye: you are perfect and i adore you, you make fandom so much fun and i hereby declare my life before i knew you to have been entirely worthless. never leave me. ♥ 
> 
> you can befriend on twitter @hwifighting, if you like, and/or you can read my twitfics @mockturtletale
> 
> i also have a curious cat if you need to yell at me after this chapter: https://curiouscat.me/mockturtletale

____________________________________________

it’s not completely out of character for jungkook to skip out on a gym session with seokjin, but he can’t say he’s not slightly concerned when jungkook doesn’t even respond to his text. the two of them are always the first ones awake on days off. seokjin knows jungkook had a hectic evening trying (and succeeding, by all accounts) to seduce namjoon in the back of a moving vehicle, but he also knows that namjoon spent the night with taehyung, so where the fuck is jeon jungkook and what could possibly be responsible for making him sleep so late? 

seokjin manages to put it out of his mind as he methodically goes through his workout because that’s why he does this - to stop thinking - but he’s wondering about it again when he gets back home. he pulls his phone out as he’s toeing his shoes off and there’s still no response from jungkook so he’s just about to message him again and bestow upon him the incredibly rare honour of a double text from the kim seokjin when he walks by the living room and sees the man in question sitting on the couch. spaced the fuck out. 

like, he’s just sitting there cross-legged on the middle of the couch, staring at the blank and still very much turned off tv screen. he looks like he’s in a trance. 

“uh, you good, ‘guk?” seokjin asks, coming up behind him and reaching out to run a hand through his hair. at the first touch of his fingertips jungkook’s head just lolls back into seokjin’s hand, like if his hand wasn’t there it would have just fallen right off. jungkook looks up at seokjin, upside down and no less beautiful for that, but also looking very much like a literal ghost of himself. he’s pale and totally blank faced. maybe he’s sick? 

“what’s going on, jungkook? do you feel ill?” 

at that, jungkook’s face shows signs of life for the first time during this interaction. he starts to frown but then the expression just falls away, leaving his face slack and blank once again. 

“i’m fine, hyung,” jungkook says, even his voice sounding barely there; far away somehow. his eyes are unfocused and seokjin is thinking about maybe calling a manager to take them to the hospital, but - “it’s just that i fucked sope last night and i have a dick appointment with namjoon hyung in like an hour and i think i must have left my brain in hobi hyung’s room because literally all i can think about is dick even though i’m like swimming in it right now.” 

seokjin snorts, any and all sense of concern totally settled in an instant. he walks around the couch to drop down onto it and throws his legs up over jungkook’s lap. jungkook just lifts his arms out of the way to let him and then turns that still oddly expressionless face to seokjin again. 

“is that weird, do you think? like not even puberty was this bad. not even taehyung’s transition from ‘hot hyung who is my best friend’ to ‘recklessly hot hyung i would commit crimes for no questions asked’ was this bad.” and seokjin already knew he was absolutely right about the total lawlessness of the way taehyung looks and acts, but it’s still nice to hear it confirmed by a second source. “i don’t think i’ve been fully soft all week, hyung. do you think i should see a doctor?” 

again, seokjin snorts. 

“jungkook-ah,” he says, absolutely not to any degree letting himself wonder if what jungkook just said is also true in this moment. “i think that’s perfectly normal. sure you’re getting more dick than ever before so you might think that would make you a little less … cock compelled, shall we say,” jungkook’s knee jerks a little under the weight of seokjin’s legs. that’s not the only movement happening there and seokjin presses down into it under the guise of stretching out his calf muscle. 

“but actually, your life has just become the at long lost reality of getting dicked down by six incredibly attractive men who love and are devoted to you.” the faraway look in jungkook’s eyes takes on a dreamy sheen and the ghost of a smile makes the corners of his mouth lift. “i’m kind of surprised you’re even lucid right now, jungkook. honestly, i thought we might have to tie you up. jimin and i bought rope, just in case.” 

“ah, hyuuung,” jungkook half moans, half whines, shifting in place. “that’s really not helping.” 

seokjin laughs at him. 

“i’m not trying to help you, jungkook,” seokjin explains. “that’s …” he puts a finger to his lips and pretends to consider it, “namjoon’s job, right? hey, speaking of, how are you planning on killing time until you finally get to fuck your crush?” 

jungkook grimaces at him. with real feeling, this time. 

“hyung why are you so mean to me?” he glances down at himself, his face falling. “and how do i still find you hot even when you are?” 

“aww baby,” seokjin coos at him, sitting up to brush his bangs back out of his face. he thumbs over his bottom lip, just to fuck with him. “you find me even hotter when i’m mean to you. it’s because you’re a masochist. didn’t you know that? you should have asked. hyung would have told you.” 

he swings his legs off jungkook’s lap and gets to his feet, stretching his arms high up over his head with his ass in jungkook’s face because he really hadn’t been kidding when he said he had no intention of helping jungkook. 

right before he walks away, he catches a glimpse of jungkook stuffing the sleeve of his hoodie into his mouth. 

and that almost makes him take pity on jungkook, but ultimately doesn’t. namely because jungkook has been tormenting him for years and he’s owed whatever scraps of payback he can manage to claim. and so, he waits a full ten seconds before he calls out to jungkook. 

“well? aren’t you coming, 'guk-ah?” 

jungkook scrambles up off the couch so fast that he has to grab the edge of the coffee table for support. 

_/_/_/

seokjin hadn’t necessarily been looking forward to kissing jungkook any more than any of the others, but he’s known for quite a while now that he’s going to really, really enjoy it when it happens. 

so it doesn’t really surprise him that when he finally manages to wrestle jungkook into submission (of the willful variety, jungkook is fooling absolutely no one) and finds himself pinning jungkook’s shoulders to his bed, his hips still bucking even with seokjin’s full weight on them, it’s more than mere satisfaction that sweeps through him. 

“what’s wrong, jungkook?” he asks. he lets up for a second to reach for jungkook’s arms and has to really work at it not to laugh when jungkook just lets him lift both of his hands up over his head, hold them there with one of his hands gripping both of jungkook’s crossed wrists. “is something the matter, baby?” 

jungkook’s shoulders come off the bed. he arches underneath seokjin, all lean, strong muscle that he’s letting seokjin completely control and while that in itself does a lot for seokjin, what really seals the deal for him is how much it seems to do for jungkook. 

he balls his hands into fists. twists his wrists together until seokjin can feel the bones grinding together under his hand. and when he realizes that seokjin isn’t letting up, isn’t letting him go, his eyes roll up into his head. he closes his eyes and opens his mouth and the groan that pours out of him makes the foundations of something ancient in seokjin crumble to nothing. 

seokjin grabs for jungkook’s face, holds him where he wants him with his fingers digging into jungkook’s chin and kisses him tongue first. jungkook’s jaw falls slack, his lips soft and sweet for the low hum of sound he can’t seem to break; a neverending ‘mm mm mmmm’ of need and pleasure, pleas and thanks all at once. seokjin kisses him seriously; kisses jungkook with the kind of intent that can’t leave jungkook guessing because everything seokjin feels, he says like this; his tongue and teeth and lips telling jungkook exactly what he wants to do to him and how it’s going to be done. 

when seokjin is satisfied that jungkook is going to stay the way he wants him, he takes his hand from jungkook’s face and uses it to shove his shirt up out of his way. jungkook is already breathing hard through his nose but he’s completely boneless under seokjin, his head tipped back so seokjin can kiss him deep and purposeful, his hands limp in seokjin’s hold. he’s moaning even before seokjin gets his hand cupped up around the smooth, firm muscle of his pec, almost yells when seokjin scrapes a careful thumbnail up under his nipple. seokjin anticipates it though and makes sure jungkook can’t make too much noise by giving him his tongue to suck on. he is nothing if not a considerate hyung, careful and sure to tend to the needs of his beloved dongsaengs.

“hyuuung,” jungkook whines, actually _whines_ when he tears his mouth away to breathe and seokjin growls at him in a way he really hopes jungkook reads as encouraging, because that’s absolutely how he means it. he dips his head, gets at jungkook’s throat with his teeth and tongue, soothes the scorching skin with messy presses of his lips that are scattered, an afterthought, because he doesn’t want to soothe jungkook, he wants to make him scream. 

“i wanna touch you with both hands,” he says with his mouth up under jungkook’s ear, his teeth dragging carefully over the tendon standing out starkly in jungkook’s neck, “but will you keep your hands where they are?” he sits up to look down at jungkook, who is already a mess; his chest heaving, his back arched so hard that only his shoulders and hips touch the bed. the look in his eyes is mindless in a whole different way to how it had been before. no longer spaced out but wild, now. he looks fucking incredible. “can i trust you to be good for me?” 

when jungkook nods, it’s frantic. 

“yes. yes hyung. i’ll be good. i’ll do anything,” he says in a rush. when seokjin lifts his hold on jungkook’s wrists, jungkook clasps his hands together, locks his fingers and pushes his hands into the sheets himself. “i’ll do whatever you want. just touch me, hyung. please.” 

seokjin shakes his head at him, mock admonishing, as he pushes jungkook’s shirt the rest of the way up and pulls it off. jungkook’s hands come apart to let the sleeves slide off his wrists and then they’re locked back together in an instant. plenty of people have been desperate for seokjin before, but it’s never been like this. it’s never been jungkook he had under him and already begging. 

“such a sweet, desperate boy,” seokjin croons at him, pushing his bangs out of his face and letting his fingers trace his cheekbones, the tense line of jungkook’s clenched jaw. “didn’t yoongi and hobi treat you right last night? how could they leave you so wanting, such a lovely thing?” 

jungkook never stops moving under him. he keeps his hands where they are and his eyes never leave seokjin’s face, his gaze locked and his forehead furrowed like he’s concentrating hard, like he’s afraid of what could happen if he lets seokjin out of his line of vision. but his body is a livewire; tension sparking along his spine and making his hips roll with it. seokjin can hear his bare feet sliding against the sheets, kicking out and restless. 

“me and hobi made out around yoongi’s dick, hyung,” jungkook says; intones, really, like the very concept bores him, “and then yoongi hyung fucked me and hobi hyung let me come in his mouth. i cried three separate times.” 

“and yet - look at you,” seokjin marvels. jungkook’s eyes are glassy like he’s refusing to blink. his hands are white knuckled around each other. his chest is heaving, already starting to shine with sweat. 

“my brain remembers those things, hyung, but my body feels like no one has ever touched me before you.” 

once again, seokjin finds himself overwhelmed by emotion when really he has no right to be, he thinks. the same thing happened yesterday with namjoon and it’s not okay. he had his freakout about being in love with them all several years ago. the way he feels about them is very old news; to him, at least. so why does he feel like a cola bottle that’s been shook too hard when they say heartfelt, romantic things to him? he loves them. it’s only right and reasonable that they love him back. his heart is being dramatic for literally no reason. and yet it persists. 

“that might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me, jungkook-ah,” seokjin is mildly distressed to have to admit. he trails his hands down over the still moving line of jungkook’s body, his fingertips dipping down into the space between jungkook’s very well defined pecs. jimin would look so good titty-fucking jungkook, some far off, very distant part of seokjin’s brain decides. “you’re a very sweet boy and i love you just as much as i want to hold you down and tear you apart, i hope you know that.” 

the two aren’t really mutually exclusive for seokjin. and when it comes to jungkook, they’re kind of the same thing, honestly. 

jungkook grits his teeth and huffs out some kind of noise, some exhalation of fond frustration. 

“cool, same, now can you touch me before i die, please?” 

“but baby,” seokjin reminds him, sniggering when jungkook closes his eyes again and his hips kick, “i’m not allowed to touch you, remember? i’m off limits, still.” jungkook lifts his head up off the bed to glare at seokjin. “we’re just killing time until namjoon gets here.” at that, jungkook’s head falls back to the bed. he bucks so hard under seokjin that he almost actually dislodges him. 

seokjin laughs in his face. 

“you poor thing,” he says, leaning down to kiss jungkook on the forehead and then on the bridge of his nose. he skips his mouth completely to kiss his chin. “you think you’re going through it now, but your poor sex addled little brain hasn’t even caught up to the fact that you get to fuck namjoon in -” seokjin checks his watch. “fifteen minutes. what would i walk in on if i came back in half an hour, huh? or an hour? you and namjoon can both do whatever you want, now. have you thought about it, jungkook-ah? what are you gonna ask your favourite hyung for?” 

jungkook pouts at him, still trying to strain up far enough to kiss seokjin on the mouth, but seokjin keeps pulling back right when he almost reaches. 

“i don’t have a favourite, hyung,” jungkook protests, making seokjin laugh again. “okay, fine,” jungkook relents, “i maybe like namjoon hyung in a way that’s a little bit different to how i like any of the rest of you, but it’s not more, hyung. i like you all in different ways.” 

he sounds petulant, as usual, but also almost upset, which is not usual. seokjin feels bad, so he leans all the way back down and lets jungkook kiss him until it’s not frantic, not a declaration anymore; something soothed and languid and slow. 

“seriously, hyung,” jungkook says, hushed and so serious that seokjin is already inclined to believe him, but - “i’ve been thinking about getting you on your knees for me for years, literal years. remember that choker you wore for the AAAs in like 2018? i thought about fucking your throat for too long on the ride back from the venue and came in my pants. i had to make jimin spill his drink on me to cover it.” 

seokjin has vague memories of that night. mostly him and hoseok laughing themselves almost sick on the drive back home, reading through all the hashtags and tweets that were trending all over the world just because seokjin had worn a white shirt with the collar pulled wide and a plain, simple black choker. to think; his own bandmate had been having a small breakdown about it right in the very same van. seokjin is impressed. by himself and the incredible power he wields. 

while he’s been lost in his thoughts, jungkook has taken advantage of seokjin’s distraction to nose under his chin, to get his head tipped up far enough that jungkook can lift his head off the bed and press his lips to seokjin’s neck, the pulse that’s thumping a hard and fast beat just beneath his skin. 

“i wanna put my cock right here,” jungkook tells him, opening his teeth around the thick column of seokjin’s throat and sucking, humming with pleasure as he does. “i wanna be able to put my hands around your throat and feel myself inside you.” 

“namjoon isn’t going to know what to do with you,” seokjin breathes and it’s supposed to be admonishing but it sounds nothing but admiring, instead. he lifts a hand to the back of jungkook’s head and cradles him to his neck, closes his eyes and bites at the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t yell out when jungkook gets at his collarbones with his teeth. “maybe i should stay to supervise. maybe namjoon will need a hyung’s guidance.” he’s mostly kidding, mostly just saying anything he can so he doesn’t shut his mouth and close his eyes and get lost in the way jungkook feels under him, get waylaid and break taehyung’s rules. 

but jungkook goes rigid against him. his hands start to come up off the bed but he pushes them back down, hard, his wrists trembling when he presses them back to the sheets again. 

“hyuuung,” jungkook fusses until seokjin looks down at him properly. previously, jungkook saying that word to him that way made seokjin’s fight or flight instincts kick in and generally the former. from now on, he suspects, it’s going to incite an entirely different reaction in him. they’re going to have to update their NDAs. 

after taking a second to close his eyes and catch his breath and remind himself that he absolutely cannot have sex with jungkook right now, seokjin looks down at him. and swears. sometimes it feels like every time he looks away from jungkook, he gets more attractive somehow. he’s sweaty and shirtless and holding himself very still, very obediently for seokjin and yet he has the audacity to lay there looking up at seokjin like _he’s_ the one worth swooning over. seokjin kind of wants to apologize - though he’s not entirely sure what for - and go back to his room for a self-imposed time out. 

“hyung,” jungkook almost-whines again and seokjin comes pretty close to laughing at himself for thinking he could walk away from him, when he’s like this. “hyung would you want to? stay?” 

it takes a second for seokjin to remember what he’s talking about. 

“when namjoon-hyung comes,” jungkook reminds him, “would you stay, hyung? would you like to?” 

again, seokjin’s thoughts are slow to catch up. 

“hyung!” jungkook is close to yelling at him, now and seokjin doesn’t know why that’s what makes him actually pay attention, but it does. “hyung do you want to watch namjoon-hyung fuck me, yes or no?” 

seokjin just stares at him. 

jungkook’s eyes shift down and away. 

“well i don’t know for sure that’s what’s going to happen, but that’s what i’m going to ask for. do you think namjoon-hyung will say yes, hyung?” 

jungkook’s eyes are back on him and anxious now. 

seokjin laughs. and laughs and laughs and laughs until there are tears streaming down his face and he has to sit forward with both his hands on jungkook’s chest taking his weight while he hiccups through it and tries not to choke. 

“you -” he starts to say but then breaks into another peal of laughter. jungkook is frowning at him now but also almost going cross-eyed trying to look down at seokjin’s hands on his own bare chest. “ah, jungkook,” seokjin sighs, wiping at his eyes and then leaning down to lift jungkook’s face, both his hands tilting him up into a kiss. “sometimes hyung gets so distracted by how hot you are that he forgets you’re just a silly little baby. ahhh,” he sighs again, fond and smiling against jungkook’s mouth. “you make me laugh so much. you make hyung so happy, jungkook.” 

“m’not silly,” jungkook protests, petulant even when he’s straining to get at seokjin’s mouth, his hips bucking under seokjin’s ass. seokjin keeps lifting up so jungkook never gets to make proper contact, but sometimes he sits down just far enough that jungkook can rub his cloth covered but still considerable cock up against him. he kind of wants to sit further back, press their dicks together through their clothes and let jungkook go to town. that wouldn’t be breaking the rules, he doesn’t think. he’d absolutely take the time to clarify some things on that front with taehyung if he didn’t know that the rules weren’t going to matter tomorrow. not for him, after tonight. 

“i _said_ -” jungkook glares at him and then immediately ruins the effect by licking seokjin’s cheek like a dog, “i’m not silly.” 

seokjin grins at him. 

“but you are a little baby, is that what you’re saying?” jungkook bares his teeth at him and seokjin isn’t even ashamed of how that makes his dick a little harder. this is why jungkook is so much fun; as little self restraint as seokjin has around jungkook, he can always count on jungkook to have even less. “you’re a not-silly little baby who failed to notice that namjoon, your hero hyung, sometimes has to go entire days without letting himself touch you because he wants to do so much more than that so badly that he thinks getting too close to you would make him lose control?” jungkook makes a choked sound and then starts to scoff, but seokjin puts a finger to jungkook’s lips and he shuts up immediately. oh, seokjin likes that. “how did that escape you, jungkook? were you preoccupied with studying your A-B-Cs?” 

jungkook sucks seokjin’s finger into his mouth and then uses his tongue to encourage seokjin to shove another one in alongside it. 

“want namjoon-hyung to want to fuck me,” he mumbles around his mouthful. his cheeks are pinked and his eyelashes are lowered. “want all my hyungs to want to use me,” jungkook says and seokjin feels dazed for second, just looking at him. just listening to him. 

seokjin lets him suck at his fingers for a minute and then he grabs at jungkook’s chin with his other hand, pulls his mouth open so he can watch himself press his fingertips down against jungkook’s tongue. he’s very seriously thinking about asking jungkook if he can spit into his open mouth when they’re interrupted by the handle of jungkook’s bedroom door turning. 

when namjoon walks in, they both turn to look at him in unison; seokjin sitting on jungkook’s pelvis with half his hand in jungkook’s mouth and jungkook holding his own hands above his head, gently humping seokjin with frustrated little rolls of his hips. 

namjoon drops his phone, but swoops to catch it before it hits the floor. it’s the most impressively dexterous thing seokjin has ever seen him execute and he wonders, for a second, if fucking taehyung gives you superpowers. demonic abilities. whichever. maybe taehyung is a witch and he’s one by one making them his familiars. seokjin is in if it makes dancing easier. 

who is seokjin kidding - he’s in no matter what. 

“sorry, i -” namjoon frowns at his phone and then at his watch and then at the pillow above jungkook’s head. “i thought - sorry. i’ll come back later.” 

when he turns to leave, both seokjin and jungkook yell out in unison for him to stop. 

“you thought exactly right, namjoon-ah. jungkook is all yours, i was just keeping him warm for you,” seokjin says, starting to climb off jungkook, ready to take the leave that’s rightfully his until jungkook wraps both of his legs around seokjin’s waist and stops him. he’s still got his hands held over his head. he’s ridiculous and so fucking competitive, even with himself. seokjin is going to let him fuck his throat until he chokes. even their kinks are compatible; that’s how mfeo they are. 

“hyung,” jungkook says, looking at namjoon while he struggles to keep seokjin where he is. seokjin isn’t really fighting jungkook’s leg lock as hard as he can, but it’s fun to watch him grapple, more fun still to feel the way his body bucks against seokjin. “hyung, can jin-hyung stay and watch you fuck me?” he asks, like he’s asking if namjoon has time to look at some lyrics for him. “oh and also will you fuck me, hyung? please?” for this, he manages to muster up an idoneous tone; something with both gravity and veneration. 

“ah, jungkook,” seokjin says, actually almost trying to break his hold now, “a boy’s first time with his crush is a special moment. and i’m sure you would appreciate your privacy too, ‘guk,” he jokes, winking at jungkook, who stubbornly tightens his knees and sort of hisses at seokjin. it’s hot. 

“namjoon hyung, could you please answer one or both of my questions before i have to choke jin-hyung out with my thighs to make him stay still?” again - _hot_. but - 

“'guk-ah, honey. baby. you could just use your hands, sweetheart,” seokjin has to remind him, because this is all getting just a little bit ridiculous. 

jungkook pointedly lifts his locked hands into the air, holds seokjin’s gaze with his eyes blazing and then slams them back down onto the bed. 

again, that somehow makes seokjin get harder. and again, he is unsurprised but he does manage to be sort of slightly ashamed. almost.

namjoon closes the door behind him but stays standing by it, doesn’t cross the floor to where they’re still lightly tussling on the bed. 

“you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” seokjin reminds him. he knows that namjoon knows that, but it’s important to say it anyway. it’s more than important to set a good and proper example for jungkook, who tends to run too enthusiastic to remember to stop and ask questions. seokjin is not letting that particular habit bleed over into any of their bedrooms. 

namjoon makes a face at him that’s something like incredulousness mixed with disbelief and amplified times a hundred. it’s kind of like the look that comes over him when jimin does the splits when they’re warming up and that makes seokjin laugh at him. fondly, of course. that, in turn makes namjoon narrow his eyes and do that thing where his jaw clenches and he hollows his cheeks and his nostrils flare slightly and then seokjin is, very abruptly, not laughing anymore. 

“but in the interest of full disclosure,” seokjin says and he’s not embarrassed to admit that it sounds faint and breathless, “i would very much like to watch you fuck jungkook. at some point. it doesn’t have to be today. but i would like to see that. if that’s okay with you both.” 

god, it would be so hot. seokjin and jungkook are kind of feral with and for one another and seokjin is very proud of their chaotic sexual energy, but namjoon and jungkook have something like a slowed down, honey sweet and so, so romantic version of that. the two of them want each other so much that they’re going to lose their minds at getting to touch, finally, but jungkook respects and looks up to namjoon so much that he’s shy and blush-y and clumsy about it, still. 

namjoon, in turn, would do literally anything for jungkook. he’s constantly doing dumb, embarrassing things just in the hopes that jungkook will show him that huge, painfully enamoured grin that he only ever smiles for namjoon and jungkook does it every single time. his eyes all but disappear, become just a delighted crease of fluttering eyelashes and love filled laugh lines. he smiles like he can’t keep his mouth closed around his joy, every single one of his teeth on display, and his nose scrunch is so painfully adorable that even seokjin wants to grab him and squeeze the life out of him (in a cute and purely appreciative kind of way) when he sees it. 

someone should probably tell namjoon that jungkook smiles like that when namjoon isn’t even doing anything, isn’t even looking at him. he smiles like that even when someone just mentions namjoon’s name, sometimes, and seokjin loves that about him, loves that for the both of them. 

he - as the kids say - really, really ships it. 

“i’ll make a deal with you, hyung,” namjoon says, seeming to get it together enough to move away from the door, at last. he drops his phone on jungkook’s bedside table and comes to stand next to the bed. he trails one hand from jungkook’s clasped hands all the way down his forearm, follows the lines of jungkook’s lovely chorded veins until he dips a finger into the crease of his elbow, continues on to cup his hand around the strain of jungkook’s bicep. he ruffles jungkook’s hair and jungkook blushes. 

seokjin wants to point and laugh, but then namjoon takes a step further, moves to stand in between seokjin’s spread legs where he’s sitting on the side of the bed now, even with jungkook’s thighs still locked around his waist and letting him go no further. namjoon looks down at seokjin like he’s considering him in a way that seokjin finds he really enjoys being considered and seokjin isn’t laughing or pointing because he’s sitting very still and gripping jungkook’s knee for support and thinking seriously about how he absolutely should not think about what it was like to kiss namjoon. namjoon, who is lifting seokjin’s chin and tilting his face up to look at him, now. 

“you can watch me fuck jungkook today,” namjoon says and jungkook and seokjin’s sharp intakes of breath come in chorus, “if i can watch you fuck jungkook tomorrow.” 

“CALL,” jungkook shouts, making both namjoon and seokjin startle and then turn to him with raised eyebrows. 

“i don’t remember anyone asking you for your input,” seokjin tells him, because being mean to jungkook is easy and familiar enough to calm him down and right now his pulse is racing. “or was it someone else who told me they wanted all their hyungs to use them, hmm? why don’t you lie there like a good boy and be quiet until someone decides you’re worth using, huh?” 

namjoon’s eyes go as wide as saucers and then somehow even wider when jungkook’s only reaction to this is that his jaw clenches and his hips kick hard against seokjin. seokjin understands namjoon’s shock, but he also knows there’s no need for it. 

“jungkook-ah,” seokjin reaches out and snaps the band of jungkook’s boxers against his skin to get to his attention, to get him to open his eyes. “did hyung say anything that made you uncomfortable?” seokjin and jungkook have talked about their kinks a bit over the years; jungkook usually blushing furiously and seokjin doing absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that he was talking about his bandmates in a way that he hoped wouldn’t always be hypothetical. 

jungkook’s eyebrows dip together low on his forehead and he pushes his tongue between his bottom teeth and lip; his thinking face. 

“well actually hyung,” he starts and then lifts his eyes to seokjin’s, “i didn’t love the part where you didn’t respond to namjoon-hyung’s offer. the rest worked for me, though.” his eyebrows lift again and his mouth stretches out into his patented and worn ‘cocky little shit’ grin. 

seokjin puts his hand over jungkook’s very obviously hard dick and squeezes until jungkook starts to squirm; albeit into seokjin’s hand rather than away from it. 

“see? he’s good,” seokjin says, turning back to namjoon who is staring at seokjin’s hand like it can tell him the meaning of life. 

“i’m good, hyung,” jungkook echoes him, his legs going lax around seokjin so he can plant his feet and buck his hips up into seokjin’s tight grip around his dick even harder. “nothing gets me off as much as the thought of all of you fucking me however the hell you want to; just pushing me down and using me.” seokjin’s belly knots up, something hot coiling low and getting tight, at that. he doesn’t know what kind of sound he makes, but jungkook’s eyes zero in on him, lidded and perfectly knowing when he says “there’s so much i want to do, but when i need to get off quickly; when i’m so wound up and turned on i can’t wait, that’s what i think about. the six of you passing me around like a toy, like a thing just built to give you pleasure. that’s what i want most of all.” 

and maybe seokjin already knew that, to some extent. maybe it’s something jungkook has talked about before, in small ways, in the small hours of nights that went on forever, a solemn voice speaking wistfully in rooms devoid of light, confessions offered up only in the dark. but back then, he’d shared it as a secret; shown it to seokjin with shaking hands and anxious eyes not because he was scared for seokjin to hear it, but because it had terrified him how much he meant it. and that had been a lot for seokjin to deal with. it’s a moment that became a thought that he’s never quite been able to bring himself to forget about or move past, even when he’d thought of his hopes for them all as a lost cause. 

but now jungkook says it in broad daylight. says it not like he’s confessing to something or sharing anything of himself, but offering a very real possibility instead; one for him and them to realize together. jungkook says it now as a declaration. 

“i want to be where every single one of you comes to let go. i want to be why you all fall to fucking pieces,” jungkook says and seokjin can’t speak for namjoon, but he doesn’t feel asked. he feels told. he feels _claimed_. 

“jungkook,” seokjin says and it’s a low gasp as much as it’s a word and he doesn’t even know why he said it because he can’t say anything else. “jungkook,” he says again and then he pushes jungkook’s legs apart, pushes his knees down onto the bed and leans down between them, kisses jungkook hard and messy and fierce, almost savage. jungkook gives as good as he gets; bites a stinging kiss around seokjin’s fat bottom lip and then shoves his tongue into seokjin’s mouth. jungkook might be the one that’s half naked, on his back with his hands restrained, but seokjin in that moment feels caught; feels held down, stripped bare and _seen_. 

without having to try, he’s already giving jungkook exactly what he wants. 

next to them, he hears namjoon swear under his breath. seokjin feels burned by it when namjoon places a hand high on the back of his neck. he feels perfectly caged in - caught - between the two of them. he’s going to do unspeakable, unholy things to both of them. and that will only be the beginning. 

“hyung, could you stop looking at me like you want to eat me alive and respond to namjoon-hyung’s offer, please? the suspense is killing me.” jungkook nuzzles the side of seokjin’s face, lets his lips catch up under the line of seokjin’s jaw bone and giggles when seokjin shivers. “c’mon hyung,” he says, low and taunting in seokjin’s ear, “tell namjoon-hyung you’ll let him watch. tell namjoon-hyung that you would love it if he was there to see me come on your cock, hyung. tell him you might have to tie me down because i want to be good for you, hyung, i do, but i’m so fucking eager to get my ass fucked sloppy by your big dick that i don’t think i can make myself hold back.” 

jungkook yelps when seokjin pushes his head back down onto the bed with a fist caught in his hair. when seokjin sits up and looks down at him, he’s grinning wide and victorious. 

“you’ve got yourself a deal,” seokjin tells namjoon and then he gets to his feet, helps himself to two handfuls of namjoon’s shirt and yanks him in to kiss him so hard that it steals his breath. namjoon is hard in his shorts, presses himself against seokjin and whines low through his nose and seokjin gets lightheaded, gets dizzy with how much he wants them both. “please, 'joon-ah,” he says against namjoon’s mouth, with namjoon still sucking at his lips, “please fuck this terrible hellion hard enough to shut him up, because i would do it myself - i’m really looking forward to doing it myself - but i’m not allowed to, yet.” 

there’s a pause, a flash of fabric and a sharp intake of breath; namjoon pulling his shirt up over his head and tossing it aside, going for seokjin’s then and doing the same for him. 

“wanna see you while i fuck jungkook, hyung,” namjoon says, stepping back in close to kiss seokjin again, pushing his hands down into the back of the sweats seokjin is wearing. “take these off. get naked, hyung, i wanna look at all of you.” 

there’s a bitten off sound from behind seokjin; a groan that ends in a growl of frustration. he can hear jungkook shifting on the bed, twisting to try and find some friction. seokjin takes pity on him. on himself, that is. 

“jungkook-ah,” he says without looking, because he’s absolutely transfixed by the look on namjoon’s face; the way he bites at the corner of his own mouth and breathes hard when he grips at seokjin’s ass, his eyes starting to slip shut when seokjin just lets him, his lips bitten white when seokjin pushes forward against him, ruts against namjoon with both of their cocks hard and trapped between their hips. “you’ve been good, you’re so good for hyung,” seokjin says, because it’s important to say. jungkook deserves to know what a good boy he is and seokjin loves getting to be the one to tell him. “but you can use your hands now, baby. come put your hands on hyung, hyung wants you to touch, jungkook-ah.” 

the pause is pregnant. jungkook gets quiet, must go still and seokjin’s right there with him, bracing himself. waiting. 

“are you sure, hyung? can i? did i earn it?” his voice comes softly, yearning and unsure. 

seokjin closes his eyes and cups his hands up under namjoon’s lovely full pecs, just feels the weight of them and then pinches at one nipple, bends to get his mouth around the other. 

“you earned it, baby, you’ve been so good for your hyung,” seokjin presses the flat of his tongue across namjoon’s nipple, means to tease it with the tip of his tongue, maybe his teeth, then, but ends up pressing his open mouth to the hot skin of namjoon’s chest to muffle the sound he lets out, instead, because jungkook is in an instant up on his knees on the bed behind seokjin. he’s kissing at the curve of seokjin’s neck and shoulder and his hands are there, where seokjin wants them; on him, now. his palms come warm and a little rough around seokjin’s ribs and then down over his abdomen, seokjin’s stomach muscles jumping under them. jungkook’s hands push down into the front of seokjin’s sweats while namjoon’s hands are still grabbing hard and greedy at seokjin’s ass beneath his underwear. 

seokjin puts his forehead to namjoon’s collarbone and pants against his soft skin and wishes, more than anything, that he could let the two of them pull him apart just like this. 

but he can’t. he’s not allowed to. and that only makes him want it more. 

jungkook’s hands are in his briefs now, one lifting seokjin’s cock to press up against his belly, thumbing over the wet head while the other hand dips low to cup at his balls, to roll them together up against the base of his cock. jungkook’s bare chest is pressed tight to seokjin’s bare back and he’s got namjoon’s hands trapped between their bodies. 

“hyung,” jungkook says, plaintive, but when seokjin lifts his head to see what he needs, he finds that namjoon has already beaten him to it. jungkook is leaning in over seokjin’s shoulder to take namjoon’s mouth in a desperate kiss that seokjin can see and hear up close; the noises their lips make sending little shockwaves of heat right through him, the flashing glimpses he gets of their tongues making him try to push closer to namjoon.

jungkook’s hands disappear from seokjin’s underwear and seokjin would complain about that - loudly and at length - but he’s distracted by namjoon grunting softly, wonders why until jungkook’s hands are back on him, all but ripping his sweats and briefs down off his hips. jungkook pushes them down his thighs until they pool around his ankles and then seokjin is the one groaning because his cock is pressed into the warm skin of namjoon’s bare belly. jungkook’s hands are around them both; getting namjoon’s cock lined up against seokjin’s. namjoon’s shorts are gone too even though his hands are still on seokjin’s ass, his fingers digging in hard around the muscle and then spreading out, one finger edging towards seokjin’s hole. 

jungkook must have stripped them both; must have shoved both their pants down out of the way so he could get them pressed together like this and that’s so hot to think about that seokjin could swear the whole world stops for a second, goes still for one excruciatingly long beat of time when all he can do is feel how good namjoon feels against him, how good jungkook feels behind him, all around him. 

and then he feels his pulse between his legs. feels his heartbeat in the heavy throb of his dick. his balls start to draw up and his body tenses, everything in him straining towards something and he has to gently tug jungkook’s hand away, has to step out from in between them because he was just about to come. 

he kicks his sweats and briefs away and sits down heavily on the side of jungkook’s bed and he can’t look at either of them for a second, has to hold his hands to his face and close his eyes and just breathe, just concentrate on anything that isn’t either of them or any of this until he gets himself under something like control. 

when he can bring himself to look at them again, jungkook has his arms up around namjoon’s neck and namjoon has his arms looped low around jungkook’s waist. they’re both silently watching seokjin. 

“hyung, did you almost come just from this?” jungkook asks, both sounding and looking fascinated. 

“‘this’ being you jerking me off against namjoon’s dick and humping my ass, which was being groped while the two of you kissed like right in my face?” seokjin asks, trying to sound irritated but definitely failing to properly hide his awe the further he progresses through that sentence. “yes, jungkook. i absolutely almost came from just ‘this.’ what do you want me to say?” he looks them both up and down, pausing pointedly to stare at where namjoon has started to work at the drawstrings on jungkook’s pants. “sorry you’re both so hot that feeling a bit like you were about to fuck each other _through_ me almost made me nut?” 

at this, jungkook and namjoon look at each other. 

“do you think you could support his weight if -” namjoon says at the same time as jungkook says - 

“hyung could lie down on top of me and -” 

and then they both get wide eyed and stop talking to just grin at each other instead. 

“that’s very touching and all, but i absolutely won’t survive that,” seokjin has to remind them gently, because they seem excited and they’re both such nerds but they’re also very hot and he’s in love with them. “also i don’t know what the rules do and don’t extend to here. i’m pretty sure neither of you can make me come. and it would feel wrong to come on one or both of you, too.” his mind skips right over that thought, hopscotches it for the sake of his own sanity. “how about i double check with taehyung while the two of you get down to business?” 

“sounds good, hyung,” jungkook murmurs and then he’s crossing his arms behind namjoon’s back and pressing his smile to namjoon’s and seokjin knows he can safely entrust them both to one another’s care for a few minutes while he goes about the very important work of setting out to get taehyung’s permission to come. 

he pauses to pull his briefs back up before he goes. for the sake of professionalism and all that. 

_/_/_/

taehyung is sitting up in bed reading when seokjin goes to find him. yoongi is curled up in the sheets next to him, asleep half in taehyung’s lap. 

when seokjin steps inside the room, taehyung holds a finger up to his lips, mimes for seokjin to be quiet so as not to wake yoongi. it’s sweet. they’re cute together. 

“hey, good morning,” seokjin whispers and taehyung smiles softly at him. he doesn’t say anything though, because they all know he is absolutely incapable of whispering quietly. his voice is way too deep. it must be all the demonic chanting or something. 

“quick question,” seokjin whispers and taehyung tilts his head at him, eyes big and curious. 

“i know i’m not supposed to fuck anyone else before you,” he says and taehyung’s eyebrows lift a little but still he says nothing. he puts his book down and brings a hand up to rest on yoongi’s shoulder but keeps looking at seokjin, waiting for him to finish. “but i’m gonna go watch namjoon fuck jungkook and i’m just wondering what the parameters for that are?” 

at this, taehyung’s eyes go huge. and then they slowly become lidded, dark and scrutinizing. he looks at seokjin differently, focusing on him completely now and seokjin feels it almost like a touch when taehyung’s eyes trail slowly but purposefully down the length of seokjin’s body, lingering below his waist. taehyung’s big hand is still banded possessively around the ball of yoongi’s shoulder and seokjin doesn’t understand why taehyung touching yoongi possessively makes seokjin feel like his claim on both on them is being strengthened; confirmed and returned, but it does. looking at the two of them, seokjin can’t think of them both as anything but his. he similarly, can’t think of himself in any way that isn’t ultimately just a convoluted way of saying that he is theirs. 

taehyung makes a noise, a hummed sound of consideration but again, he says nothing. 

seokjin feels both entirely ridiculous and overwhelmingly turned on. this is something he hadn’t really thought about before, but it’s something he finds himself wanting to explore, needing to know the extent and depth of. how far does this go for him? does it only work so much for him because it’s taehyung? maybe he could give taehyung permission to control when and where and how he comes for a week or a few days or something. he wonders if taehyung would be into that. he hopes that would turn taehyung on as much as even just the thought of it is turning him on right now. he can’t even think about it maybe extending to the others. his eyes fall on yoongi, still sleeping peacefully and he has to cut his thoughts off quickly and cleanly. 

“so. i figured neither of them should touch me. um,” seokjin pauses to blush, “more than they already have. but is it okay if i touch myself?” again - that’s a ridiculous thing to have to ask. he feels very stupid. he’s also somehow harder right now than he was when he was in between jungkook and namjoon and getting grinded on from both sides. 

taehyung stays just looking at him for a minute longer, lips pursed like he’s debating something. he seems to decide and reaches into the sheets to find his phone, unlocks it and types something into it. then he lifts his eyes to seokjin and gestures at him. shoos him out, actually. seokjin frowns at him, confused, but when taehyung neither does nor says anything more, he can only shrug and go. 

when seokjin gets back to jungkook’s room, jungkook is naked now and sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands in namjoon’s hair. namjoon is on his knees between jungkook’s legs, stroking the shaft of jungkook’s cock slowly and kissing the tip of, getting it wet and messy with his spit and tongue. he’s not trying to suck it, not properly. he’s just playing with it, letting it slide between his lips and tongue like a lollipop, like he’s making out with the flushed head of jungkook’s cock. seokjin gets lightheaded, for a second. 

“your phone did a thing, i think you got a message, hyung,” jungkook says faintly and then he his head falls back, the long line of his throat working around a guttural groan when namjoon sinks his mouth down over his cock. 

seokjin blinks. and watches namjoon work his way back up off jungkook’s cock, slurping loudly and moaning low. seokjin blinks again. 

and then he gives his legs a stern lecture in his head and goes to jungkook’s bedside table to retrieve his phone. he sits down almost next to jungkook, but leaves about a foot of space between them, just to be safe. and then he opens the message from taehyung.

taehyung 🆘  
  
you can get yourself off watching them, hyung. but i’d really like it if you sent me a picture right before and right after, if you can do that.  
  


and then a second message right after;

thank you for asking for permission. you’re a very sweet and considerate hyung. i’m excited to spend time with you later, just the two of us.  
  


seokjin feels warm all over. he’d gone hot at the thought of taehyung wanting pictures of his dick but the second message hits him with a tidal wave of fondness. they spend all their time together and have for years now. they should be sick of each other. and sometimes they are. but even after having lived in one another’s pockets for so long now, it’s still special to spend time together. especially when it’s just a few of them. or only two of them, one on one. the thought of it makes seokjin feel special. taehyung saying it makes him feel cherished.

“hyung, i’m the one namjoon hyung is going down on, why are you crying?” jungkook asks and seokjin is startled to realize that he is. he’s crying. namjoon lifts his head from where he’d been suckling at jungkook’s balls to look at him, alarmed until seokjin smiles softly at him and reaches out to brush his sweaty bangs out of his eyes. 

“ah, hyung is just feeling sentimental. it’s happy crying, don’t worry,” he assures them both, sniffling a little and putting his phone back down but making sure it’s within reach of the bed. taehyung is counting on him. 

“now chop chop, sweet things. hyung has permission to come so i hope you’re ready to put on a show,” seokjin says and namjoon looks up at jungkook but jungkook doesn’t look away from seokjin. he raises one eyebrow at him and then he smirks and looks down at namjoon. he lifts namjoon’s chin and leans down to kiss him, open mouthed and filthy. 

“hyungs,” jungkook says when he pulls back, urging namjoon to his feet and then crab walking backwards on the bed until he can lie down in the middle of it and reach out for namjoon to come to him, “i’m going to need your absolute, undivided attention for a little while. can i have that?” he asks, but it’s not really a question at all. again, seokjin feels like he’s being told something. 

“you can have anything you want, jungkook-ah,” namjoon says, low and solemn as he crawls between jungkook’s legs and honestly, seokjin couldn’t have said it better himself. 

_/_/_/

seokjin finds himself incredibly grateful for his absolute lack of self preservation instincts, when not having those is precisely what gets him here; lying next to jungkook as namjoon fingers him open for his cock. 

“see, it’s great,” jungkook is explaining, even though he has to pause around sharp intakes of breath, bite down on groans that start in his throat but don’t make it past his teeth, “because i would be so sad about not getting to see namjoon-hyung’s face right now,” his fingernails are dug in hard around seokjin’s elbows, stinging lines scored down his forearms as he clings to him, “but this way, i get to look at hyung’s pretty face.” 

seokjin huffs a laugh at him. 

“i’m not even doing anything,” he reminds jungkook, who closes his eyes and opens his mouth, pants when namjoon gets more lube on his fingers and goes in with three. 

“ahh, oh hyuung,” jungkook almost wails and seokjin reaches up to take his face in both his hands. jungkook opens his eyes to look at him at the touch and seokjin had meant to kiss him, he wants to kiss him, he’s going to kiss him, but first he has to just look at him like this. 

namjoon is holding him steady with one hand, spooned up behind jungkook with one arm underneath him, banded up around his waist to keep him still. jungkook is on his side, his top leg lifted up, his thigh thrown over both of seokjin’s where he lies on his side too, facing jungkook. 

everything namjoon does to jungkook; every single touch and twist of his fingers is written clear across jungkook’s face. his eyes are wild again, his bangs wet with sweat. his mouth is full and red just from him biting at his lips himself and the sounds he makes would make even seokjin blush if the blood supply in his body wasn’t solely routed to his dick right now. jungkook reacts to everything and his sweet, clear voice has never sounded better to seokjin than it does when he’s needy and loud about it; when he gets what he wants and moans his gratitude like words can’t do what he’s feeling true justice. 

“hyung,” jungkook gasps again and it doesn’t even matter which one of them he’s talking to, seokjin has to kiss him. when he leans in, jungkook already has his mouth open, lips parted around a honeyed little moan and it’s easy as anything to press his lips to jungkook’s, to let him make all the sounds he wants when they’re hummed into seokjin’s mouth, when seokjin can taste them on his tongue. jungkook kisses like he’s being paused and unpaused; going still sometimes just to shiver, just to let seokjin do what he will with him while he trembles through what namjoon is doing to him too. sometimes he takes the lead, his hand on seokjin’s jaw firm, tilting his face to kiss him deeper, kissing his excitement and his need out of his system, passing it on into seokjin. 

when namjoon lifts his head from where he’d had his forehead pressed to the back of jungkook’s shoulder, it looks like he’s about to say something until he makes eye contact with seokjin and freezes. seokjin wonders if he’d forgotten he was here. he wonders if maybe namjoon would prefer it if he wasn’t here. maybe he should leave. maybe this would be more special for them if he wasn’t here, getting in the way. maybe he’s ruining this for them. he’s about to excuse himself, apologize for getting caught up in the moment and then leave, but then namjoon hooks his chin over jungkook’s shoulder. he presses a kiss to jungkook’s cheek and then strains forward to try and reach seokjin too. 

“hyuung,” _he_ whines when he can’t quite make the distance and god, seokjin hopes he’s allowed to stay for this, because the thought of the two of them fucking while they’re both whining for him … 

“cute, namjoon-ah,” seokjin murmurs and then leans the rest of the way in so namjoon can kiss him. “both of you are fucking adorable,” he decides and then he holds both of their faces with one of his hands, alternates between kissing them both until namjoon decides to deepen their kiss into something more serious and jungkook has to settle for mouthing at the tendons in seokjin’s neck, instead. it’s surreal, having the two of them like this. he’s not even allowed to touch them yet, not properly and it’s already overwhelmingly hot. 

“okay this is great, i’m so glad you’re here jin-hyung,” namjoon says and seokin smiles at him, feels warmth bloom in his chest and has to kiss him on both of his cheeks. and then jungkook too, because he pouts. “but i really need to fuck jungkook before i just come humping his ass, instead.” 

jungkook’s eyebrows lift a little with interest, but namjoon’s forehead is creased up like he’s in pain and seokjin gets it because it has often pained him in the past that he couldn’t fuck jungkook. 

“so come on, fuck me,” jungkook says, his hips twisting back against namjoon, “that’s what i’m here for.” 

namjoon’s eyebrows furrow in concentration and he’s reaching behind himself for something, probably the lube and seokjin doesn’t know why he’s so excited, he’s not getting fucked, but his heart is racing like in a way, maybe he is. 

“hey,” he says to jungkook, making him lift his head from where he’s kissing along seokjin’s collarbones, “can i watch?” jungkook looks at him, confused, until seokjin looks meaningfully down between them and then his confusion clears and his whole face goes almost blank, his expression hazy with bliss. 

“ohh,” jungkook says, the word drawn out, a throaty rumble, “you wanna watch namjoon-hyung put his cock in me, huh? that’s hot, hyung,” jungkook’s eyelashes flutter, his eyes slipping shut and seokjin can hear the wet push of namjoon fingering more lube up inside him. “get to it, go on,” jungkook’s eyes slit open again and he smirks at seokjin. god, he’s so hot. he’s so fucking hot. “get a good look, hyung. you’ve got vip for today, but the hi-touch event isn’t until tomorrow.” 

and that’s cute, that’s funny and sweet and cute as all hell, but seokjin isn’t physically capable of laughing when he’s thinking about getting to fuck jungkook tomorrow. he scoots down the bed, jungkook’s hands going to his hair and his shoulder. he leans up on his elbow and hooks jungkook’s leg high up over his ribs and then, because he’s an incredibly thoughtful and helpful hyung, he runs his hand up jungkook’s thigh until he can get a good grip of his ass cheek and grabs at it hard, spreading jungkook open so namjoon can better see what he’s doing. if this gives seokjin a better view of what namjoon is doing too, that’s merely pure coincidence. 

namjoon’s cock is about the same size as seokjin’s, but just slightly thicker. it’s a really, really nice cock and seokjin honestly doesn’t know who he’s more jealous of right now. 

“you ready, ‘guk?” namjoon asks and it’s mean, it’s pure teasing because he’s already got the shaft of his cock lined up over jungkook’s hole, he has to be able to feel the way jungkook is pushing back against him, basically riding the hot line of him. 

“yeah, yes. _please_ ,” jungkook says and maybe namjoon wasn’t teasing him at all. maybe namjoon just wanted to hear jungkook say ‘please’, because he swears when he does. jungkook is biting hard at the inside of his cheek when seokjin glances up at him, seems just as affected by that word as namjoon is, as seokjin can’t help but be, too. “god, please. please, hyung,” he says again and namjoon grabs for a handful of his hair, pulls jungkook back until he turns his head enough that namjoon can kiss him. it’s maybe the most loving and romantic thing seokjin has ever seen. namjoon leaves his cock pressed hard and sticky between jungkook’s cheeks and pours every ounce of his concentration into kissing him breathless, instead. 

“fuck, i -” jungkook swears against namjoon’s mouth and then goes right back to kissing him, his fingers digging in tight around the muscle of seokjin’s shoulder, his cock jumping against his belly. “fuck. i love you so much. i’m stupidly, completely in love with you, hyung,” he says and namjoon makes a sound like a quiet sob, his eyes bright and shining with unshed tears. 

“i love you too, ‘guk-ah. been in love with you forever, i think,” namjoon says and seokjin can’t believe he’s getting to witness this; he can’t believe he was lucky enough to be here for this moment. when he lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes, both of them turn to look at him. 

“why are you crying again?” jungkook wants to know, but he’s almost giggling as he says it, nothing but fondness colouring his tone. 

“this is a big deal. it’s an emotional moment,” seokjin says in his own defense. “thank you for letting me be a part of it,” he adds, lying back down for a second to kiss jungkook quickly and then sitting up again so he can lean over jungkook’s hip and kiss namjoon, too. 

“you are a part of it, hyung,” jungkook tells him, his face creased up in concentration as he tries to work himself back against namjoon’s cock in earnest, now. 

“you’re here because we’re in love with you too, hyung,” namjoon says, slapping jungkook lightly to try and still him. predictably, it has the opposite affect; jungkook yelps and then moans, redoubles his efforts to try and get namjoon’s cock inside him. “hyung, seen as how you are here, could you help me? hold him still, please, he’s wriggling too much for me to be able to do what he wants me to do.” namjoon shoots an almost-glare at jungkook, who doesn’t see it because he’s too busy trying to both grind back against namjoon and hump his dick against seokjin’s chest. 

“of course, baby, that’s exactly what i’m here for,” seokjin says and he coos at namjoon when this makes him blush at him. he shifts so that he’s leaning on jungkook instead of the bed, anchoring jungkook with his arm pressing his weight along jungkook’s side, his forearm following the line of jungkook’s body. his other hand goes right back to where it had been; holding jungkook open for namjoon. 

jungkook hooks his arm around seokjin’s shoulders, his hand back in seokjin’s hair and gripping tight when namjoon starts to push in. 

“fuck,” seokjin says, watching jungkook’s hole stretch open to accomodate the girth of namjoon’s cock, the head slipping inside like it’s being swallowed up. excess lube gets pushed out around it, jungkook’s rim shining obscenely and fucking _pretty_ with the stretch. “fuck, that’s so hot,” seokjin gasps and his own cock throbs like it’s the one getting pushed into jungkook’s ass. 

“feels - oh, fuck. feels good. such a nice big cock for me, hyung,” jungkook says and seokjin and namjoon swear at the same time; different words but the sentiment identical. 

when the slide stops, when namjoon is all the way inside jungkook, his hips pressed up under jungkook’s ass, he puts his mouth to the top of jungkook’s spine and kisses him there. 

“m’glad i can make you feel good, baby,” he says and it’s not cocky or try hard or corny, it’s so absolutely sincere that it makes even seokjin swoon. 

“god, how are you so painfully fucking earnest even when you’re literally fucking the maknae, that’s absurd,” seokjin complains. “come over here, kiss your hyung with that mouth if the alternative is going to make me cry again, you little brat,” he says and both jungkook and namjoon are laughing softly at him when namjoon pushes himself up behind jungkook and leans over him to kiss seokjin. 

seokjin can’t help it, even when he’s sucking at namjoon’s lovely fat bottom lip his hands are wandering; his right hand taking the left’s place gripping jungkook’s ass cheek tight, keeping it lifted high, so his left hand can slip down underneath it, his fingers gently touching the stretched rim of jungkook’s hole, pressing down lightly so he can feel him full. jungkook keens and namjoon hisses softly and seokjin gets to _feel_ it when namjoon pulls back out a little and then pushes back in. 

“move, hyung, you’ve gotta move,” jungkook says, his voice tight, “please, i - i can’t -” but namjoon doesn’t make him finish that sentence; doesn’t let him. 

“i’ve got you, baby,” he says and then he pulls all the way out, leaves jungkook’s hole clenching around nothing until he goes all the way back in, grinding in deep when he bottoms out. jungkook moans and then seems to choke on empty air, gasping around nothing but his own breath. namjoon keeps it up, works up a rhythm that gets jungkook crying out on every other thrust, trying to fuck himself back on namjoon’s cock even though both namjoon and seokjin are holding him still. 

“such a needy little thing,” seokjin observes, mostly just to watch the way jungkook’s cheeks pink sweetly and his cock twitches up towards his own stomach. he’s so hard he’s leaking now, pre-come dripping onto the sheets between him and seokjin. “you’re making a mess, baby.” he reaches for the lube namjoon had discarded, doesn’t bother warming it up before he wraps a wet hand around jungkook’s cock. “i’m pretty sure this is breaking the rules,” he says as he strokes jungkook slow enough to make him grit his teeth and grate out a sharp sound of frustration at him. “but you’re worth it. i’ll gladly let taehyung take me across his knee and spank me if it means getting to touch you now.” 

“jesus _fuck_ , hyung,” namjoon says, because jungkook is too busy using the handful of seokjin’s hair that he has grabbed to pull him up, to pull him close. 

once they’re face to face again, seokjin smiling fondly and jungkook looking about as undone at getting fucked by namjoon as seokjin would expect, namjoon puts his hand around seokjin’s, uses seokjin’s hand to jerk jungkook off like he can’t get in trouble if it’s namjoon that’s directing his movements. 

jungkook shifts forward until he can nose against seokjin’s chin, his cheek. when he presses their mouths together again, his lips and tongue are soft, even though the kiss is anything but.

“can’t believe you’d get spanked for me, hyung. that’s romantic as fuck,” he almost whispers against seokjin’s mouth, like his voice has given out on him. “i love you,” he says and his voice gets louder, stronger, winds up into a groan because of how hard namjoon is fucking him now. seokjin can feel it in the way jungkook’s cock is getting jostled up into his and namjoon’s overlaid hands, jungkook’s thigh slipping back and forth against seokjin skin where it’s thrown up over his hip. 

“i love you too,” seokjin says, shuffling forward a little bit when jungkook puts his arms around his neck and clings to him, because he’ll never do anything but facilitate a clinging jungkook however and whenever he can. 

this is exactly how he would always have jungkook, if it were up to him; he’d keep jungkook doing nothing more complicated than simply holding him, while he and namjoon and whoever else was around at the time all did their utmost to take care of him; to do whatever it took to satisfy him. 

jungkook sighs, his eyes closed, seeming lost to the tide of pushing forward into namjoon and seokjin’s hands and then letting namjoon’s arm around his waist guide him back onto his cock. he looks dazed and sated and blissful and seokjin will bring him back here a thousand times before he’s tired of it; could look at jungkook totally undone by them every day for the rest of his life without ever getting bored. 

jungkook tilts his head to one side, doesn’t even open his eyes or pause in the roll of his hips, so instinctual it is for him to accommodate namjoon when he puts his forehead to jungkook’s shoulder, his sweat damp bangs falling forward over jungkook’s collarbone, dripping sweat down onto jungkook’s heaving chest. 

“and you,” he tells namjoon, who peeks up over jungkook’s shoulder absolutely fucking adorably when the volume of seokjin’s voice tells him he’s being spoken to. he’s all wide eyed even when his forehead is creased up with the effort he’s putting into fucking jungkook and god, seokjin whole-heartedly adores him. 

“you seem to think the other maknaes are loud enough about their satanic ways that you can just slip under the radar, undetected,” namjoon huffs some kind of sound at that; some note of disagreement, but seokjin shushes him.

“no, shut up. i’m on to you, kim namjoon. the first time i saw you in shorts i knew exactly what you were,” at this, jungkook voices his own agreement with seokjin’s statement. it’s just a high pitched and garbled version of the word ‘thighs’ maybe repeated a couple times, but seokjin gets it and namjoon must too, because he blushes. so pretty. he’s so fucking pretty, it’s ridiculous. it’s nothing but unfair, that seokjin has to look at the two of them like this; has to just watch when they get to be together, get to touch. he’s touching them too, far too much, probably, but it’s still not enough. he doesn’t know what ‘enough’ looks like, when it comes to these six boys he wants to keep. he doesn’t think it exists, for him, if it has to be applied to them. he looks at jungkook and wants, always. he looks at namjoon and can sometimes barely bear not to touch him. 

now, namjoon is making moon eyes at him across jungkook, is looking at seokjin like he’d wage wars for him even while he’s balls deep in someone else and that’s fine, that’s great, that’s wonderful, actually, because seokjin’s only feelings on that are absolute support and impatience for his own turn. he wants to fuck them both. he can’t wait to get fucked by them both. he’s going to have them and the other four people in this with them every single way imaginable and god has seokjin spent a lot of time cataloguing and planning out his fair share of those so far. 

seokjin tightens his hand under namjoon’s, takes control again to focus on the head of jungkook’s cock, the slide getting wetter and wetter now and seokjin wants so badly to press his cock up against jungkook’s; to get a hand around the both of them and get them off just like that, but he can’t. he wants to, but he won’t. namjoon drops his hand to jungkook’s balls, fucks him faster while he rolls and squeezes them in his hand and when jungkook keens, namjoon fucking _growls_. 

“god, you’re so hot. you’re always so fucking hot and you think we don’t notice?” seokjin tells him and namjoon at least looks chastised, pouts a little in a way that could be apologetic but is probably actually just disagreement again, because he is that fucking difficult. he seems to work hard sometimes, at rejecting and deconstructing their compliments. but seokjin won’t be deterred, not anymore. “the diamond choker that one time? nothing but incubus vibes, baby. you might have fooled everyone else, but not me. and you know why? because i’m always watching you. usually thinking about you sitting on my face, if i’m totally honest.” 

namjoon’s blushing hard enough now that his cheeks are hot to the touch when seokjin leans in to press his face against namjoon’s. jungkook is tense between them, trembling everywhere they touch and namjoon is fucking him slower, drawing it out but pushing in hard when he does, the slick sounds of his cock working inside jungkook followed now by the muffled slap of his hips against jungkook’s ass. jungkook’s cock jerks in seokjin’s hand and he knows jungkook’s about to come. he doesn’t look at him, can’t, and he barely has the presence of mind to just seek out namjoon’s face, can’t kiss him, not properly, just needs to touch. 

“want you so much, joon-ah,” seokjin says against the side of his face and namjoon whimpers, pulls back so he can look at seokjin almost like he’s checking to make sure he means it. it’s impossibly difficult to just stay still and let namjoon look at him when he’s being vulnerable, when he’s laying himself bare for him, for them, but he does it. he looks right at namjoon, his eyes threatening to close, almost welling up, all from the weight of how much he feels, being here like this with them and namjoon is the one that sobs. it’s a small sound but it rings in seokjin’s ears and he feels like he’s temporarily deaf when he looks at namjoon; at his hair all sweat wet and messy, falling into his eyes and dripping, dark at the back of his neck. his mouth is so lovely, his lips so pink and soft looking and sound comes back to seokjin slowly, but when it does the first thing he hears is jungkook speaking, voicing seokjin’s own thoughts. 

“kiss him you idiot,” jungkook says and seokjin narrows his eyes at him, spares a second to glance up at him and take in the way he’s looking down at them both, wide eyed and open mouthed but then jungkook’s hand in his hair is turning him away, bringing him back to face namjoon again and pushing him in closer, close enough for them to kiss. 

the two of them hold jungkook still, seokjin taking his hand off jungkook’s cock but moving in closer to him, pressing them together so that jungkook can rut up against his belly. namjoon is still fucking him, but with short, hard thrusts now, barely pulling out before he’s going back in and staying deep, fucking jungkook full. 

when they kiss this time, it’s different. seokjin forgets about everything else, forgets as much as he can all the things that this means for them and for their future. he lets himself just look at namjoon, just love him and when namjoon leans in, “hyung,” whispered quiet and imploring between their lips, seokjin lets himself fall. he wipes his hand off on the bedspread so he can touch namjoon, so he can put his hand on namjoon’s neck and feel his pulse when he stretches to kiss him. 

“hyung,” namjoon says again, low and almost a whine now and seokjin has to close his eyes as tightly as he can, wants to grit his teeth at how jungkook echoes namjoon a second later, his voice high and strained, but he does the opposite. he lets his mouth fall open against namjoon’s, lets him kiss him messy and a little clumsy for all the things namjoon must be concentrating on coordinating right now. it makes him think of the way namjoon and jungkook had looked together, namjoon totally ignoring the fact that he was seconds away from fucking jungkook for the first time because he’d been so intent on kissing him soundly, instead and that’s how seokjin feels now; soundly kissed. wanted. loved. 

“oh my goddd, that’s … fuck. that’s so -” jungkook’s sentence gets bitten off sharply, harshly. seokjin wants to look at him. seokjin wants to keep kissing namjoon forever, but he also wants to look at jungkook, wants to watch him fall apart and when namjoon huffs a little laugh against his mouth and pulls away, just barely, seokjin is entirely grateful. 

jungkook is biting his own hand. seokjin can see his teeth, can see how hard jungkook’s jaw is clenched and he is momentarily blindsighted by this boy who is so close to coming that he’s using his own body as a chew toy, but won’t reach to touch himself; who is held down between his hyungs getting fucked just like he asked but instructs the two of them to kiss each other instead of him. 

“baby,” seokjin says, the word bursting on his tongue, his heart suddenly thumping in his chest. he kisses namjoon once more, just a quick press of lips, a bookmark for later and then nods at him, namjoon understanding at once and rearranging himself behind jungkook, taking his hips in both his hands now. 

seokjin lies down facing jungkook and tugs his hand away from his mouth, kisses the shallow ring of teeth marks jungkook has bitten into his own skin and then cups jungkook’s face, lifts it up into the light. when namjoon starts to fuck him properly again, pours all his effort and concentration into nothing besides that, jungkook’s mouth falls open. his throat ripples around a hard swallow and his moan is so low, so guttural, that it makes seokjin shiver. 

“is this good, baby? is this what you wanted?” he asks jungkook and jungkook’s eyes are wild when he opens them to look at seokjin. “are your hyungs taking care of you like you need?” 

“kiss me, hyung,” jungkook demands and seokjin, of course, complies. jungkook can’t really get it together enough to kiss him properly, not with the way namjoon is fucking him making him pant and writhe and moan, but he still gives it his very best efforts. seokjin holds still and lets him do whatever he can; holds still and takes it when jungkook smoothes both his hands down either side of seokjin’s spine and then helps himself to two hard handfuls of seokjin’s ass, holds him in place so he can press his sticky cock against seokjin’s stomach. 

seokjin is hard too, almost enough that it hurts, but he doesn’t think about it. if he thinks about it he’ll have to back off, he’ll have to move away from jungkook and he won’t do anything that results in that. all he can think about is jungkook, straining between him and namjoon. jungkook, so hot and eager and needy, making the most wanton sounds seokjin has ever heard, caught between his hyung’s cocks. 

“are you gonna come, baby?” seokjin asks, whispers low in jungkook’s ear just to watch the way it makes goosebumps break out across jungkook’s neck. “gonna make a mess on hyung’s stomach?” jungkook’s cock jerks between them and his voice breaks on the sound he makes. namjoon is groaning almost constantly now, fucking jungkook so hard that the sound of it is only ever getting louder, only ever wetter and wetter, the slap of their skin intense and filthy.

“you should come on hyung’s cock, ‘guk. get me wet enough that i don’t need anything other than your come to jerk off, baby.” jungkook’s forehead creases up, his nose scrunching with it and he’s so close, seokjin can feel it everywhere they’re touching. he can hear it in how namjoon cries out, jungkook clenching around his cock. 

“namjoon’s close too, ‘guk. are you excited for him to come inside you? such a good boy, earning an ass full of his favourite hyung’s come.” jungkook and namjoon both moan together, namjoon swearing then. 

“fuck, i - i can’t, he’s so -” namjoon says and jungkook’s eyes slip shut, his eyelashes fluttering. 

“he’s so what, 'joon-ah?” seokjin prompts, provoking, because he knows exactly what it does to jungkook, hearing namjoon praise him. 

“he’s so fucking _hot_ , hyung,” namjoon sounds like he’s close to tears, but jungkook is the one with wet eyes now. “so fucking pretty, looks so good like this, hyung. i didn’t think - i never thought i’d get to -” namjoon breaks off and wraps an arm all the way around jungkook’s waist, holds him back against him and fucks him hard enough that the whole bed shakes with the force of it. “i love this,” he says and presses his mouth to jungkook’s tense shoulder blade. “i love him, i love you,” he says low and quiet and it’s then that jungkook goes completely still between them. 

“hyungs, hyungs i -” jungkook starts to say but his voice breaks again, whatever he was about to say falling apart on his tongue because his fingers dig into seokjin’s ass hard enough to bruise and he clutches seokjin to him as he comes between their bellies. seokjin holds him through it, kisses him to distract himself from both the thought and feeling of jungkook coming on him but then jungkook whimpers into his mouth and namjoon whines high behind him and pushes into him once, twice more before he’s opening his mouth against the back of jungkook’s bicep and smothering the noise he makes when he comes, too. 

seokjin can taste his own heartbeat on his tongue. his mouth opens and closes on nothing because he can’t say anything. he can barely think, he’s so turned on. he bites down on his tongue and smoothes jungkook’s hair out of his face instead, kisses him on the apples of his cheeks and then on his cupid’s bow, nudges their noses together and kisses him softly on the mouth. 

“you’re ridiculously pretty together,” he tells them both, sitting up a little to press a kiss to namjoon’s forehead, the only part of him he can reach like this. “that was the hottest thing i’ve ever seen in my life.” 

jungkook opens his eyes and shifts against him, wiggles a little in place and fear freezes seokjin because he can’t, he absolutely can’t deal with the way jungkook’s softening cock drags against his, jungkook’s come making everything wet and sticky and so, so much. 

when jungkook speaks, his voice almost back to something like normal, there’s an edge to it, like namjoon fucked him hard enough to make him forget how to speak and now he’s doing it for the first time all over again. 

“hyung, it’s your turn now,” jungkook says and namjoon disappears for a second, probably to pull out of jungkook, judging by the look that briefly crosses jungkook’s face. “c’mon, get yourself off hyung, i wanna see,” he says, almost managing to sound impatient already and god, this boy is going to be seokjin’s undoing. 

“please, hyung. come for us,” namjoon says, sitting up and seokjin quickly corrects himself: _these boys_ are going to be his undoing. these two and yoongi and jimin and hoseok. and taehyung. 

taehyung. fuck. 

“i need to - pass me my phone, joon-ah,” he says, pulling away from jungkook and rolling onto his back, shifting up in the sheets so he can put his head on jungkook’s pillow. he kind of wants to bury his face in it. he could absolutely come just from the smell of jungkook right now, let alone the sight of him and the still fresh memory of what he just witnessed, but he has to stay on track here, he’s got a mission to complete. 

“you - you need to make a call? right now?” jungkook asks, looking adorably lost and jesus fuck, how can someone’s eyes turn seokjin on? why is just jungkook’s soft, confused face enough to make his cock jump against his stomach? oh right, probably because his cock is covered in jungkook’s come. 

“no i - thank you,” seokjin says, taking his phone from namjoon’s hand and pulling up the camera app. “taehyung asked for before and after pictures. that’s his payment for letting me come with the two of you.” and that’s not really true, taehyung gave him permission either way, but it’s hotter to think of it this way. like seokjin’s dick pics are currency, between them. 

“well, shit,” namjoon says. 

“fuck, that’s hot,” jungkook agrees and then he’s moving, way too fast for someone who just came his brains out like two minutes ago. definitely probably also a demon. “let me take it, hyung, i can get a better angle.” 

and it’s a ruse. seokjin can see that a mile off. but he goes along with it willingly, because it’s jungkook. 

“lie back, hyung, touch yourself,” jungkook instructs, pushing seokjin’s thighs apart so he can kneel between them. he lifts the phone up, playing around with the lighting settings. “that’s nice. will you send these to me too?” he asks idly, like he thinks if he says it mildly enough seokjin won’t realize what he’s asking. he’s dumb. he’s really hot and incredibly intelligent but also dumb as fuck if he thinks he has to ask seokjin for anything and genuinely worry that seokjin might say ‘no’. 

seokjin only rolls his eyes at him and holds a hand out to namjoon, who comes to lie down next to him. 

“do you want the lube, hyung?” namjoon asks, dipping in close to press his mouth against seokjin’s shoulder. 

“no, he doesn’t. my come is enough,” jungkook says decisively, challengingly almost and seokjin doesn’t know what his face does at hearing jungkook talk like that, but it must be worth capturing because jungkook takes several quick shots of him. 

“i’m fine like this, but you’re sweet to ask,” seokjin tells namjoon, gathering jungkook’s mess with his fingertips and blindly wrapping a hand around himself while he leans in to kiss namjoon. “such a good boy, so kind and thoughtful,” he says against namjoon’s mouth just to see namjoon blush. 

“hyung,” jungkook whines and their kiss becomes a shared exhalation of soft laughter. “i’m good too, hyung, i’m kind and thoughtful too,” he says, voice sounding kind of breathy and seokjin looks up to figure out why and promptly nearly swallows his own tongue. 

jungkook has his knees apart on the sheets, pushed right up inside seokjin’s spread thighs. he still has seokjin’s phone in one hand, but the other is between his own legs. holding himself open so namjoon’s come can trickle out of him, sliding wetly down the inside of his thigh. 

“isn’t this helpful?” jungkook asks, looking pointedly at the way seokjin’s cock jerks against his stomach at the sight, a fat blob of pre-come beading at his slit. “i think i’m being very kind and thoughtful right now, hyung,” jungkook says so matter of factly and namjoon murmurs something next to him that sounds strangely like a prayer. 

seokjin tries to say something biting, maybe something witty and disparaging and just slightly mean, just enough to take jungkook down like, one peg. one measly little peg. but what he does instead, is make a high and broken sound in the back of his throat and then fist his cock so fast that when he finally comes, he sees stars. he’s pretty sure he catches sight of a planet or two, even. 

“see?” jungkook says smugly as he lifts the phone again and seems to zoom in, because as seokjin may have mentioned - he is a demon. taehyung must have turned him, there’s no other explanation for him. “conclusive evidence,” he says, snapping a picture, then another, “that i am a very good boy.” 

namjoon giggles against seokjin’s shoulder and seokjin joins him after a minute, mostly so he doesn’t start openly weeping instead. 

jungkook pouts at them both. 

“come on, come here, you’re the best boy,” seokjin tells him, shaking his head at him but smiling, reaching out for him. 

“oh are we _cuddling_?” jungkook makes it sound like the most elicit and exciting act possible and again, namjoon giggles at him. it’s adorable, honestly and seokjin doesn’t even mind leaving the two of them curled close together and kissing sweetly while he goes to jungkook’s dresser to grab wet wipes. he’s feeling so magnanimous, in fact, that he leaves them both kissing in the middle of the bed as he wipes all three of them down, even going so far as to be purposefully gentle about it. and not just with namjoon, as his general disposition would dictate. 

when he’s done and jungkook’s waste paper basket is almost full to the point of overflowing, he picks his phone up and stretches out next to them, slapping at their hands so he can concentrate on looking through the pictures jungkook took and sending the best ones to taehyung. jungkook took them, though, so they’re all perfectly in focus, exceptionally well lit and make him look magnificent. he sends them all and then sets his phone to ‘do not disturb’ and throws it off the side of the bed, rolling over and letting them pull him close. 

seokjin lets jungkook tangle their fingers together and smiles at him over namjoon’s shoulder, makes a kissy face that in turn, makes jungkook’s nose scrunch up when he smiles. it’s adorable. namjoon shifts between them, wriggling restlessly until he finally curls up on his side and drags seokjin in close to be his big spoon. jungkook immediately starts to fold himself into a ball, chanting what sounds like ‘littlest spoon, littlest spoon’ under his breath and seokjin turns his face into namjoon’s hair, his arm stretched out across both of them and jungkook still refusing to let go of his hand. 

he’s just about to fall asleep when namjoon lifts his head off the pillow, twists to look at seokjin over his shoulder. 

“hyung, i brought that diamond choker home, you know. just … fyi,” he says and then he turns away again and presses his mouth to the top of jungkook’s spine. 

jungkook, already asleep, sighs contentedly and seokjin stays very still and does not scream. 

it’s a feat of incredible willpower and one that he’s both proud of and genuinely surprised by. 

he’s going to need to start keeping track of all the things he wants to do with his groupmates, he decides. his notes app is about to get a serious workout. or maybe yoongi can help him with a spreadsheet, he hears he’s a whizz at those. 

with lots to think about and plenty more besides to look forward to, seokjin falls asleep. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

when seokjin wakes up, it’s barely an hour after he’d fallen asleep. just a short, quick nap to refresh himself and now he’s good to go again. 

he leaves jungkook and namjoon asleep together, because he got a full and restful night’s sleep last night, but they absolutely did not. they deserve extra nap time. they’re also way too fucking cute curled up together. as soon as seokjin gets up, namjoon rolls over in his sleep and squirms back against jungkook until he, also still sleep, rearranges to convert himself into the big spoon namjoon is clearly seeking. fucking adorable, honestly and seokjin thinks he does very well to restrict himself to only taking like fifteen pictures and four video clips of them. 

he steals a pair of jungkook’s boxers but gathers the rest of his clothes in his arms to drop into the laundry room on his way back to his bedroom. or maybe the kitchen, he’s kind of hungry and could probably do with having at least a snack before he wastes a few hours gaming. 

the laundry basket is full when he opens it, so he puts a wash on and then heads to the kitchen, scrolling through instagram on his phone and idly scratching at his stomach, waiting for snack inspiration to strike. 

“are you doing the walk of shame right now, hyung?” hoseok asks, looking up from his stew when seokjin walks in. he frowns and looks at his watch. “it’s barely 11am. you _really_ wanted to fuck taehyung, huh?” 

seokjin goes to the fridge and makes a quick decision, pulls out the cake that they’d been given in celebration of … something, and grabs a fork before he sits down at the table, across from hoseok. 

“i wasn’t with taehyung,” seokjin says and hoseok’s eyes bug out. 

“hyung! you broke the rules?” hoseok is whispering now, like he doesn’t want them to be overheard, like he’s prepared to keep seokjin’s secret for him. 

“you’re the only good dongsaeng i have,” seokjin decides, making the incredibly unprecedented decision to leave hoseok some of this cake for after he’s finished his meal. “you’re the only person in this house that always makes my life easier, did you know that, hoseok-ah?” 

hoseok just grins at him, where literally any of the rest of them would in this situation have asked seokjin for a favour in his moment of weakness (taehyung, jungkook), made fun of him for being so soft (jungkook, again), or brushed his compliment off either sweetly (jimin, namjoon) or aggressively (yoongi. and jungkook, again.) 

“but who did you -” hoseok starts to ask, only to be interrupted. 

namjoon runs by, like - literally runs - and is followed soon after by yoongi, power walking after him. and yelling. there’s a lot of satoori, even more swear words and seokjin kind of wants to time him, because he’s pretty sure he’s beating his own record for the most syllables said in the shortest amount of time right now. 

it’s startling, to see them both so awake and active and loud when seokjin had left them both sleeping peacefully in entirely separate rooms. how did they even have the time to piss each other off this much? 

the sound of their yelling gets contained, stays stationary and when jin leans back in his chair to look down the corridor, they’re holding their positions in the mouth of the living room, yoongi picking novels and magazines and notebooks from the stack on the coffee table to throw at namjoon, who bats them away (mostly) and seems to be trying to apologize. 

hoseok comes around to seokjin’s side of the table and with seokjin’s seat already pushed back like this so he can see, it’s easy as anything for hoseok to slide into his lap. seokjin loops his arms around hoseok’s middle and hooks his chin up over his shoulder and they both settle in to watch the drama unfold. 

“it’s not like i - ow! hyung! no hardbacks! - please i - ow! - i didn’t do it on purpose! i didn’t -” whatever dexterity namjoon may have had this morning is nowhere to be seen now. maybe the taehyung effect has a short shelf life. 

yoongi’s eyes are tiny, furious little slits. 

“i worked hard for this,” he seethes, “that’s what annoys me!” he picks up another book, sees it’s one of taehyung’s art books and puts it back down, reaches for a handful of magazines instead. “you didn’t even try! and you still won! fuck that,” yoongi decides, looking about ready to pick up the coffee table to throw at namjoon and yeah, this is probably where it’s seokjin’s duty as hyung to step in. well, actually, that moment has come and gone, but he was enjoying himself, so sue him. 

“hey block your ears,” seokjin says to hoseok, who does. he doesn’t even ask why. he really is seokjin’s favourite. for at least the next five minutes. 

he dog whistles and both namjoon and yoongi cover their ears and turn to look at him, twin expressions of horror and betrayal on their faces. he mimes that they should drop their hands and they do, but their faces don’t change. 

“so - what the fuck?” seokjin asks and then they both start talking at once, start coming back up the corridor towards him, shoving and kicking at each other as they do. they’re utterly ridiculous. and then he listens to what they’re saying and realizes the true depth of their ridiculousness is worse than he’d imagined. 

“you’re fighting because namjoon kissed all of us before you did?” he has to ask, has to double check. 

“we’re fighting because he didn’t even do it on purpose. he didn’t even try. his big dumb hot ass just wandered around kissing everyone he came across yesterday and winning doesn’t even matter to him!” yoongi actually sounds genuinely put out by this, which surprises seokjin. 

“it does too matter, hyung!” namjoon protests, “maybe i didn’t do it on purpose but i didn’t undertake any of those kisses lightly! also -” he elbows yoongi sharply, “it’s not like i went looking for them, hyung. taehyung was the only person i actually sought out, the rest of you came to find me, if you remember correctly.” 

all of them pause to think about that and seokjin and hoseok both shrug as if to say ‘that’s fair’ but yoongi just narrows his eyes even further somehow. his hackles are higher than seokjin has seen them in a while, honestly. why does this bother him so much? why does it matter at all? the very concept of ‘winning’ here is a dumb one, something seokjin could maybe see jungkook and taehyung caring about, but yoongi? he’s the least competitive of all of them. he especially thinks and often says that the mere idea of competition between them is absurd and pointless. what is this really about? 

“you’ve kissed all of us,” seokjin points out, gesturing between himself, hoseok and namjoon, his brain working towards something now. “and you’ve kissed taehyung too, obviously and i saw you making out with jungkook with my own eyes, so …” ah. there it is. “you just haven’t kissed jimin, is that it?” and the thing is, seokjin had meant the ‘is that it’ to mean ‘is that the sum of it,’ but he realizes that it could come across as asking another question entirely. he realizes this because when he says it, yoongi reacts as if he’s just been slapped. 

there’s a significant pause and then yoongi’s intake of breath is sharp, his mouth twists like he’s just tasted something bitter. 

namjoon freezes up beside him and hoseok says “oh, yoongi,” so quietly that seokjin thinks maybe no one else was supposed to hear it. 

“it’s not -” yoongi starts to say, but then he stops. he looks down, looks away, his eyes darting from side to side like he’s trying to figure something out. “it’s not about -” he tries again, but his uncertainty is very loud, now. 

“hyung,” namjoon says softly, reaching out very carefully to touch yoongi’s arm, but yoongi brushes him off and then shakes his head, folds his arms across his chest. 

“that’s not what this is about,” yoongi says but then he sighs like he doesn’t even believe himself. “it doesn’t matter, anyway. this isn’t important. this is a dumb thing to fight about,” he says and then without looking at any of them, he turns around and leaves. 

hoseok sits up in seokjin’s lap, starts to stand, but seokjin tightens his grip on him, keeps him where he is. 

“give him a minute, hobi-ah,” he says, “he needs to think.” 

“yeah,” namjoon agrees, putting his hands in his pockets but coming to sit at the table with them. “he needs to be alone with that for a while.” 

hoseok looks like he wants to argue, for a second and seokjin gets that. hoseok and jimin are both historically of the opinion that both celebrations and difficulties are made better by having company. probably because that’s the case for them. it’s sweet, it’s kind and thoughtful of them, but sometimes they need the reminder that just because something works a certain way for them, that doesn’t dictate that it also works that way for the rest of them. 

seokjin and namjoon know yoongi the best, though hoseok is barely behind them in that, so when they both agree that yoongi needs space, hoseok is fairly quick to accept their decision. 

“you’re probably right,” he says, passing namjoon a fork when he gestures for one after seokjin pushes his cake into the middle of the table. “i kind of wish you weren’t, but still. that’s not going to be a problem, is it?” he asks and namjoon and seokjin share a look. 

it shouldn’t be a problem. it definitely doesn’t have to be one. but as unparalleled as yoongi is at helping the rest of them solve their problems, he’s unfortunately pretty great at making his own problems worse than they ever needed to be before he manages to make them better. 

“probably not, but we can keep an eye on it,” seokjin decides. 

there’s a super quick fix for this and it’s for someone to just go find jimin and tell him that yoongi is going through it a little bit about not having gotten to kissed him yet. seokjin kind of wishes they’d all just sat around in a circle and done all of their first kisses at once, just for the sake of efficiency if nothing else. but not kissing jimin isn’t really the problem here. seokjin knows that and he’s pretty sure hoseok and namjoon do. 

yoongi’s reaction to that is the issue at hand. 

yoongi’s jealousy. 

for it to have him throwing things at namjoon when namjoon really didn’t do anything wrong speaks to an underlying issue. whether or not yoongi sees that and feels inclined to address it is what remains to be seen. 

“we’ll give him a few days, then we can try to help if he still needs it. if he lets us,” namjoon says and seokjin and hoseok both agree. 

the three of them eat in silence for a few minutes, probably all thinking about the same thing but hoping they won’t have to talk about it. 

“oh hey, but where were you doing the walk of shame from if you weren’t with taehyung, hyung?” hoseok asks, remembering his and seokjin’s conversation from earlier and seokjin laughs when namjoon chokes on his mouthful of cake. 

“ _oh_ ,” hoseok says, his eyebrows lifting high on his forehead. 

“it wasn’t just me!” namjoon is quick to say, “jungkook was there too!” he says without hesitation, because once a snitch always a snitch. 

“ _ohhhhh_ ,” is hoseok’s response to this. he brings a hand up to his chin and seems to really think about that, his eyes taking on a faraway, glazed kind of look. 

he shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts. 

“damn,” he says after a moment, “i don’t know why i’m surprised, but jungkook is really one ambitious kid, huh?” 

“i did foresee this,” seokjin reminds them, because he was right and it’s important that they recognize that. “i bet you don’t think my rope purchase is a “hysterical” and “personal kink motivated” overreaction now, do you?” 

hoseok has to turn around in his lap to make a face at him. 

“uh, yeah. i do,” he says and when seokjin looks to namjoon for support, namjoon can only shrug apologetically, apparently in full agreement with hoseok. 

“whatever,” seokjin decides, eating more cake than he wants or needs just so there’s less left for the two of them. “don’t come crying to me when you need to restrain him and don’t have the proper tools to do so.” 

“no worries, hyung, i can just use my handcuffs,” hoseok says, getting up and bringing his plates over to the sink. he rinses them and sets them on the draining board and then pauses by the table to kiss namjoon and seokjin both on their foreheads, not in any way acknowledging the looks on both their faces. 

“i’ve got a schedule to go to but i won’t be out long. leave me some cake, please hyung?” hoseok asks and then he’s sweeping out of the kitchen, gone before seokjin can question him any further or ask for a personal demonstration. 

“well, damn,” seokjin says. 

“you’re not wrong, hyung,” namjoon agrees, easily. “hey should we keep some of this cake for taehyung? i’m pretty sure it’s his?” 

seokjin looks down at the half or so cake that’s left in the box. 

“why did someone buy him a cake?” he wonders, though he doesn’t know why he bothers. 

“hyung, i once saw a stranger on the street stop to empty out their wallet for him. who knows why anyone does any of the things taehyung inspires them to do?” and if namjoon doesn’t have the answers to that, then those answers probably don’t exist. 

they both finish up and rinse their dishes standing side by side at the sink; seokjin washing and namjoon drying theirs and hoseok’s plates, putting everything away while seokjin wipes down the countertop. 

“what have you got on today, hyung?” namjoon asks as they make their way back to their rooms. 

“not much. i might order some food later but i was just gonna play games for a few hours. what about you?” 

“jimin and jungkook and i have a schedule in a couple hours, re-shoots of some of new concept pictures, i think. i hope it doesn’t take long.” 

“i’ll say a prayer for you,” seokjin says and then they’re at seokjin’s bedroom door and namjoon kisses him quickly, sweetly. “have fun with jungkook until then,” seokjin says, assuming namjoon is gonna go back to bed where he left jungkook napping, but namjoon turns around to look at him. 

“oh he’s busy, i think,” namjoon says, shrugging, “when we woke up he said he needed taehyung’s help with something and -” 

there’s a muffled thud, followed by a long, low moan. 

seokjin and namjoon both tilt their heads, still looking at one another. 

a groan comes, then, and that in turn is followed up by taehyung laughing and then a sharp sounding slap. instantly after that comes another low and intimately familiar moan. intimate for how they’d both been wringing it out of jungkook themselves barely a few hours ago, now. 

“well,” namjoon says, “if nothing else, you’ve got to respect his stamina, hyung.” 

“respect, or live in fear of?” seokjin asks. 

“aren’t they the same thing, when it comes to jungkook?” namjoon says, sage and - as usual - undoubtedly correct. 

“you’re a very wise young man,” seokjin observes, smiling when namjoon doesn’t disagree with him immediately. he’s already wearing him down. one of these days, this boy is going to straight up thank seokjin when he compliments him and on that day, seokjin can retire from this particular battle victorious and resplendent. “you know we wouldn’t be able to do this without you, right?” 

it’s a strange moment for such sincerity, maybe. but standing there in the hallway, with jungkook and taehyung very loudly and enthusiastically fucking only a few feet and a couple inches of dry wall away, seokjin looks at namjoon and finds himself completely overwhelmed, again. 

he looks at namjoon and he knows what it’s like to kiss him, now. he knows what he looks like naked, knows how it feels to hold him when he shakes through orgasm. those are intimate things; things that seokjin has coveted and sought for years now and nothing he’ll ever lose his sense of wonder and gratitude for. 

but more than those things, as sacred to seokjin as they are, looking at namjoon when he knows that namjoon is in love with him, when he knows that namjoon knows the depth of seokjin’s feelings for him … that’s what leaves seokjin swallowing around a lump in his throat. 

getting to touch namjoon differently now only matters so much because of what it completes: years of getting to know namjoon and only ever falling more and more and more in love with him. these new ways of knowing him are sacred only because they fall into place alongside knowing his favourite foods, hearing stories from his childhood, holding him when he cries, making him laugh until he’s clutching at his sides. 

seokjin thinks about what namjoon looks like wrapped around jungkook. 

he thinks about how he’d felt like his heart was going to explode from his body in a confetti bomb when he’d walked in on namjoon and hoseok kissing on the couch. 

he remembers lying next to yoongi and namjoon and feeling like if he looked at them from the right angle, he’d be able to see their bodies sparking everywhere they touched. 

he thinks about jimin coming to find him in the big hit building yesterday, still flushed and trembling through it as he’d held seokjin’s hand and told him that he’d kissed namjoon, told him that he was _ready_ , now. 

seokjin had gone to bed last night thinking about namjoon with taehyung; fell asleep smiling because he knew that they were together and knew that they were safe, delighted by how nervous they’d both been, stuttering and bumbling around each other but together, finally. all of them on the same page, at last. 

it’s not just loving and being loved by namjoon that’s a privilege; that makes seokjin want to cry. 

it’s getting to see namjoon love the other people that seokjin loves and be loved by them in return. it’s getting to share how he feels about namjoon with them and how he feels about them with namjoon. 

“i’m nothing special, hyung,” namjoon tells him. it’s absurd. and what’s worse is that namjoon looks like he truly believes it. “i haven’t done anything particularly impressive or spectacular. i just love you. i’ve only ever loved you all.” 

“that’s not all you did, namjoon-ah,” seokjin reminds him. “that alone would be pretty spectacular, if you ask me, but you did much more than that. you let yourself love us.” he’s too far away from namjoon, he finds. he goes to him and takes his face in his hands. 

“you made sure that every step of the way every single one of us knew that whatever kind of love we wanted, we could have.” namjoon’s hands come up and curl around seokjin’s wrists and he’s wide eyed, the sight of him swimming for seokjin slightly because his eyes are welling with tears. 

“we always had so many rules to follow and you kept us in line when you had to, you lead us over the ones you knew had no place being there in the first place. you took the fall for us all, time and time again. but more than that, you never let those rules touch us here,” seokjin says, letting one of his hands fall to namjoon’s chest. 

“you never let us forget that no one had the right to tell us who we could love. that’s why we got here. that’s the only reason we all made it here, in the end.” 

“hyung,” namjoon says and that word alone says a hundred different things at once. the way he says it adds a thousand more. 

“i’m proud of you, namjoon-ah. i’m thankful for you,” seokjin says and he means it with his whole heart. 

namjoon coughs a little, clears his throat and seokjin knows him well enough to know that what he has to say, he won’t say now. he’ll say it months or maybe years down the line. he’ll say it in the studio, in the lines of their songs. he’ll rap it for millions of people to hear. but he’ll show it, before then. he shows it now, in the way he takes seokjin’s hand in his and holds them together against his cheek. 

what namjoon means is loud in the soft flutter of his eyelashes, when he tips forward to kiss seokjin, soft and careful and slow. what namjoon started for them is heavy in the tear that spills over seokjin’s lashline and falls down to get lost between them. 

jungkook shouts something unintelligible and taehyung answers, his voice low and crooning. 

namjoon giggles, his dimples winking and seokjin presses his lips to both of them, each in turn. 

“i love us, hyung,” namjoon says, quiet and solemn but only for now. 

only for the two of them. 

when they’re seven, they’re always loud. 

“i’m excited. i’m so happy, joon-ah,” seokjin says and when they part again, they’re both smiling, shaking their heads at the sweet, chaotic cacophony their youngest two make together. 

now that they are seven, their love can roar. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

by the time seokjin has been wearing his headphones for so long that they’re starting to get uncomfortable, the sun is slowly setting in the sky. 

sunrise and sunset have always been seokjin’s favourite times of day and it’s rare that he gets to spend them at home, so when he can, he does it like this: lying on his bed with the curtains thrown wide, watching the sky gradually cycle through a spectrum of shades of blue and yellow and red and pink. 

he has to lift a hand to shade his eyes when his phone hums with a new message.

taehyung 🆘  
  
[image attached]  
  
[image attached]  
  
these are gorgeous. you’re gorgeous.  
  


seokjin kind of wants to roll over onto his stomach and kick his feet in the air.

you don’t have to flirt with me, tae. i’m the very definition of a sure thing.  
  


hey, where are you rn?  
  


the fact that you’re a sure thing is what makes me want to flirt with you, hyung. i’m at the company signing some stuff. then i’ve got a vlive to do. why? you miss me already?  
  


the thing is, seokjin kind of does. he’s got free time, it’s a beautiful evening and he really, really wants to be rolling around with taehyung already. his stomach has been tight with anticipation all day. he could barely focus on gaming, barely tasted the food he ordered because all of it just feels like something to do until taehyung comes to find him, attempts to kill time that aren’t doing their job fast enough at all. 

seokjin wants to say something snarky. he means to. but then he thinks about taehyung’s face. is helpless, after that, to not think about other parts of taehyung’s body. his shoulders. his forearms. his stupidly pretty ankles. the soft pudge of his belly, the way his bellybutton makes it look like a pear.

i do miss you. what time do you think you’ll be back?  
  


aw, hyung. i’m speeding this up as much as i can. jimin said you were gonna be free all day today. i hate that i have schedules when i could be at home with you. i’d have spent all day with you if i could.  
  


yet again, seokjin’s heart pitter patters stupidly in his chest. 

he’s used to getting butterflies over all of them, but he’d really thought that that would settle once they figured this whole thing out. it’s frightening, slightly, to think that he could potentially feel this way for the whole rest of his life. then again, maybe being so in love is what keeps him looking so youthful.

all day? isn’t that a tad ambitious? 🥵  
  


it might have been, but not after those pictures you sent, hyung.   
  


ridiculously, seokjin blushes.

okay i’m getting on vlive now. i’m gonna stream for like an hour and then i’ll be home right after. wait for me, hyung?  
  


what does taehyung think he’s going to do without him, exactly? seokjin is afraid to ask, honestly.

i’ll be here.  
  


as usual, taehyung has managed to talk him into a corner. seokjin feels like if he says anything more, anything at all, this conversation will veer off into territory that taehyung absolutely does not have time to venture into right now. not if seokjin’s going to get him home as soon as he possibly can, which he very much is.

i’m excited, hyung. i can’t wait to get my hands on you 🤗😛  
  


yeah, see? for the sake of his own sanity, seokjin is not _touching_ that. he drops his phone back onto his bed and doesn’t think about what taehyung just said or about what taehyung looks like. he definitely does not palm himself through his shorts. absolutely not. 

if taehyung is gonna stream for an hour, that means seokjin has about ninety minutes to kill. 

he figures showering and getting ready for taehyung’s return can eat up at least thirty of those minutes, leaving him with an hour to play with. 

he texts the group chat right before he gets into the shower, adding a quick shirtless mirror selfie because his bathroom lighting is fantastic and he’s very attractive.

hello paramours, both present and prospective. if anyone is at home and not otherwise engaged, i have an hour to kill from approximately 8:20pm onwards and i’m open to suggestions. interested parties should see me in my room.  
  


as he’s showering, seokjin wonders who if any of them might take him up on his offer. he’s pretty sure the entire at-least-partially-demonic line is out of the house right now. yoongi might show up, maybe he’s ready to talk about what happened earlier, by now. hoseok is probably napping. seokjin heard him get back from his schedule a little while ago and hasn’t heard a peep out of him since. 

when he’s done washing up, seokjin leans against his sink as he dries his hair off with a towel, scrolling through the replies to his message with his free hand. 

the first response is from jungkook:

we can just … do this, now? mass text to fish for dick appointments? sick! 🥵🤲🍆  
  


inconsiderate of you to do this while i’m out tho, hyung. also are you showering? without me? 😔😔😔  
  


this kid is a problem. for a while now seokjin has been debating the merits of buying a water pistol and filling it with holy water to try and keep taehyung even somewhat in line when need arises. a quick spritz to the face would be a great negative reinforcement tool, he thinks and he finds himself wishing fervently that he’d just gone for it already, because he could really use it for jungkook, too. he has a horrible suspicion that once jimin gets properly comfortable in this thing, he’s not going to be any less of a nightmare, either. namjoon is already not not a problem. maybe a super soaker would be his best bet. 

speaking of the apprentice devil, namjoon has replied, too;

jungkook-ah you’re in my lap right now? seriously?  
  


also sorry hyung but we’re gonna be stuck here for a while longer.  
  


jimin’s input is as follows;

can confirm everything namjoon hyung has said. jungkook is pouting about not getting to “play with hyung again” whatever the fuq that means and namjoon seems to be trying to distract him by telling him about hobi hyung’s handcuffs, which is a big mistake imo. jungkook’s making noises that we do not pay our team enough to have to hear. have fun without us, hyung!  
  


taehyung’s reply came right after;

i love the energy of this whole conversation. everything that’s happening here is stellar. 11/10 i fully endorse.  
  


ps @ whoever responds to hyung’s invitation please be mindful that you are merely the opening act this evening. respect the starring artist (me) accordingly (don’t make him come) or you’ll regret it (because i’ll make you)  
  


seokjin’s eyebrows lift at that one. 

no one else has replied since, aside from jungkook responding to taehyung with a small wall of the bottoming emoji. that kid is fucking insatiable and seokjin is genuinely doing his best to remember where he’d put the rope he’d surreptisiously bought with jungkook front and center in his mind when he wanders back into his bedroom. 

he’s all but totally forgotten about the casting call he’d mass broadcast until he finds hoseok lounging on his bed. 

there’s a long pause, where the two of them simply look at each other. 

hoseok is lying right in the middle of seokjin’s bed, his hands folded back between his head and seokjin’s pillows. he’s wearing a thin white tshirt that’s falling off one shoulder and a pair of black briefs and literally nothing else. seokjin looks at his legs; toned and golden and fucking endless and grips his towel tighter for support. then he looks up at hoseok’s face and has to watch the slow trail his eyes start up seokjin’s mostly naked body, and - 

“yeah, no way,” seokjin says, which makes hoseok’s eyes lift to his instantly, alarmed. seokjin shakes his head vehemently. “nope. not a chance. i’m gonna need you to stay very still and not say anything while i go put on like … a lot of clothes, because i’m not coming anywhere near you with just a towel for protection.” 

hoseok laughs at that, his whole face lighting up with it and seokjin is still swearing under his breath as he layers on a pair of briefs, the thickest sweatpants he can find, a tshirt and an oversized sweater over that. 

when he comes back to the bed, hoseok hasn’t moved. he lifts an eyebrow at seokjin’s outfit. 

“hyung, i think i’m offended that you think that’s all it would take to stop me.” 

seokjin puts one knee on the bed by hoseok’s thigh and thinks about straddling him. he’d like to, he’s definitely going to, but right now he kind of wants total access to hoseok’s legs, so he settles for laying down next to him, propped up on elbow. hoseok stays exactly as he is, only turns his head a little to look at seokjin and he’s not laughing, not smiling anymore and that’s worse, somehow. he’s just lying there, looking up at seokjin with his lips slightly parted, his gaze steady and serious and it’s registering with seokjin on a brand new, purely visceral level that he hasn’t kissed hoseok yet. 

“why haven’t we kissed yet?” he wonders out loud. he’s not able to look away from hoseok’s mouth all of a sudden, can’t help his quick intake of breath when hoseok’s tongue peeks out to wet his lower lip. 

“well, we’ve both been pretty busy wrangling various maknaes,” hoseok points out and he’s not wrong but seokjin still isn’t satisfied with that being explanation enough. he needs to acknowledge this very serious oversight on his own part. 

“i should have made time for you. i wish i’d made time for you before now,” seokjin says and hoseok does smile at that. 

seokjin must have been staring, because hoseok reaches out and takes hold of seokjin’s hand, pointedly places it high on the back of his thigh. 

“we have time now, hyung. there’s no rush. it isn’t a race.” 

and as much as seokjin knows that that is true, something in him wants to vehemently protest it. overall, this thing isn’t a race at all. but personally, seokjin feels like he should have been racing against time, against opportunity, against whoever and whatever got in his way in his pursuit of getting to kiss hoseok. his hand is moving slowly, so slowly up the smooth, soft skin of hoseok’s thigh and he doesn’t know how to stop it, doesn’t know if he can. 

“you’re thinking something ridiculously sappy, aren’t you? i can see it on your face, hyung,” hoseok says. again, probably the power of having fucked taehyung at work and giving him the ability to temporarily mind read. but - “your face gets so soft,” hoseok goes on. “i can see what you’re thinking here,” he softly traces the pads of his thumb and index finger around the corners of seokjin’s lips. “and here, and here,” he says, carefully caressing the thin skin above seokjin’s cheekbones and smoothing his thumb down between seokjin’s eyebrows. when he leans in to press his mouth there, seokjin can’t help his soft exhale; a quiet gasp that makes something in hoseok’s eyes change. 

seokjin has no complaints so far about any of the ways he’s kissed and touched any of them, but it has tended to be on the frantic side. when he kissed yoongi in the front hall he was the one who was rough about it; shoving yoongi up against the door and kissing him because he needed to, because he was going to lose his mind if he didn’t, after watching yoongi kiss jungkook and hoseok right in front of him. 

every second he’s spent with jungkook himself has felt like an exercise in self restraint; always makes him feel like he’s walking the very thin line between obeying his instincts and not for one second even considering doing what they would dictate he do. 

namjoon mostly makes him want to get down on one knee and produce a grotesquely expensive diamond ring with six matching duplicates. but when seokjin is near him, when namjoon is within kissing or touching range, seokjin is totally helpless, feels caught on a hook that’s tugging him closer, closer, always ever closer. 

here, with hoseok, it’s different. and if seokjin had thought about it all that much as a matter of comparison - instead of simply as a matter of habit, as is usually the case - he’d have realized that it was bound to be different. because hoseok is different. 

there’s no real sense of urgency, between the two of them. the moment feels suspended around them; like they’re trapped together like this, held in amber. seokjin can’t think beyond this room, beyond right now. hoseok’s eyes are as heavy as a caress on his face and seokjin finds himself holding his breath, anticipation gripping him and making him tense all over. 

hoseok cups his hand around the ball of seokjin’s shoulder, runs his hand slowly, deliberately down the length of seokjin’s arm and he was right, it was stupid of seokjin to think that barely two layers of clothes would be enough to deter him in the slightest. hoseok has always had this way of touching him over his clothes, fleetingly, in passing, that somehow makes seokjin feel like he’s completely naked, like everything about him is clearly visible and being offered up to hoseok. 

when hoseok slides his palm down into seokjin’s and laces their fingers together, seokjin has to will himself to be careful not to squeeze too tight. not to beg. 

“hobi. hope-ah,” he says and knows he has failed. 

“i’m here, hyung. i’ve got you, love,” hoseok says and before seokjin can do something incredibly embarrassing like whimper, he gently pushes seokjin onto his back and leans down after him with one hand cradling the back of seokjin’s head. 

“wanted to do this forever,” he murmurs low in between them and then there’s nothing in between them at all because he fits his mouth to seokjin’s and seokjin’s eyes slip shut automatically, his whole world narrowing to only this; just the press of hoseok’s lips against his. 

it’s soft. hoseok’s mouth is so soft and he’s holding seokjin so carefully, touching him so gently. 

seokjin reaches up with both hands to grab fistfuls of hoseok’s shirt. 

hoseok gasps, shocked by the force of it and that’s perfect, that’s exactly what seokjin wants because now when he tugs hoseok down over him hoseok’s lips are parted, his breath short and shocked out of him all over again when seokjin pushes his tongue up into hoseok’s mouth, licks over his bottom lip and then touches their tongues together. 

now that he has hoseok where he wants him - all over him - seokjin can use his hands for other things. he drags one up over the back of hoseok’s neck, gets his fingers knotted loosely in hoseok’s hair. the other, he pushes up under the leg of hoseok’s briefs, copping a copious feel of hoseok’s gloriously toned and tanned thigh as he does. 

“hyung, the rules,” hoseok pants, twisting away to breathe against seokjin’s cheek. 

seokjin laughs and hoseok tilts his face back in, kisses him again like he can’t help it. 

“this isn’t breaking any rules, hobi-ah,” seokjin says, because hoseok should know by now that he’s never come across a line he didn’t immediately have to test and toe. “i have no intention of making you come, babe. just wanna touch you.” 

hoseok lifts up again to look down at seokjin. his eyebrows dip together low on his forehead like he’s thinking, like he’s trying to make sense of what seokjin has said. he reaches behind himself and gets a hand wrapped loosely around seokjin’s wrist, tugs a little at it for emphasis. seokjin, in response, tightens his grip on the handful of hoseok’s ass he’s grabbing. hoseok jerks against him. 

“hyung, this feels like intent,” hoseok protests, but his eyes slip shut for a second, his bottom lip sucked up into his mouth. 

“too much? want hyung to stop?” seokjin asks and hoseok swears at him, which seokjin finds entirely delightful. 

“no hyung, i don’t want you to stop. that’s the problem.” 

hoseok rolls off seokjin, rolls onto his back next to him and seokjin sits up and follows him down. hoseok reaches for him with both hands and his chin tilted high for a kiss and seokjin gives him what he’s asking for. he keeps his touches pg-13, grips hoseok’s waist and cups a hand up under the sharp and lovely line of his jaw. 

“what would you want hyung to do, if we could?” seokjin asks because maybe jungkook isn’t the only masochist in this household. 

“ah hyung, that’s not fair. that’s so mean,” hoseok protests but he’s the one pawing at seokjin’s ass now, his hands hardly gentle or patient. 

“do you want to fuck your hyung, hope-ah? do you like hyung’s ass that much?” seokjin traces the line of hoseok’s jaw with the tip of his nose and then dips lower, drags his mouth slow and wet down the line of hoseok’s neck. he feels it when hoseok swallows hard. he feels the rise of hoseok’s chest when he sucks in a huge breath. “or do you want hyung’s cock instead? you’d look so good taking it for your hyung, hobi. you’d be so pretty like that. hyung would ask nicely. might even beg you to let me fuck you, sweetheart.” 

hoseok lifts seokjin’s face up to his own with both hands, holds him there so he can kiss him deep and filthy. 

“want all of that hyung. wanna touch you every way i can,” he mumbles between kisses, between the keening sounds he makes when seokjin sucks at his tongue. “i really wish i could blow you right now. want to get my mouth on you so bad,” he all but slurs against seokjin’s mouth and his hips lift up off the bed, his feet planted and his back arched to get them pressed together. they’re both hard and seokjin wants to pull hoseok’s briefs down, wants to get rid of his own underwear and sweats and get them pressed together, bare against each other. the hand that’s been playing it safe at hoseok’s waist slips beneath his back, grips a tight hold of a firm and supple ass cheek and squeezes. 

hoseok whines and seokjin sees stars. he can’t help it, he has to reach down to palm at hoseok through the thin material of his briefs. he swears when he feels it; the damp spread of fabric stretched obscenely over the wet head of hoseok’s cock. 

“look at you, already wet for your hyung. that’s so sweet, hobi-ah.” 

in response, hoseok turns his face into seokjin’s bedding and pants brokenly into his pillowcase. he’s drooling and seokjin should find that gross, he sleeps here, but all he can think about is hoseok drooling around his dick, hoseok dribbling spit and seokjin’s come down over his own chin. 

“hyung, i can handle like three more minutes of this and then i’m going to have to hobble into your bathroom and come my brains out because of you.” 

that sounds pretty good to seokjin, who mostly just wants to ask if he can watch. he can’t, though. between this and watching namjoon fuck jungkook this morning, he’s keyed up enough that just seeing hoseok come could send him over the edge. and there’s still taehyung to consider. seokjin closes his eyes and moans a pained “fuck,” against hoseok’s chin. 

“okay,” he decides, “just a little more and then you can go. use hyung’s shower if you want, i left some lube in there.”

and they do exactly that. 

they make out messily, fast and intense with insistent wandering hands, all the while basically humping like teenagers and seokjin has never been more relieved in his life than he is when hoseok breaks away suddenly and all but sprints to the bathroom. he does a funny little run across the bedroom and throws a harried “sorry hyung, love you, you’re just too hot,” over his shoulder, his eyes huge and his voice strained before he all but slams the door shut after himself. 

seokjin slumps back against his pillows and breathes carefully, purposefully slow until his heart rate calms the fuck down, all the while mentally instructing his dick to do the same. 

the shower starts up and then there’s a sound like a bottle hitting the shower floor, followed up by a low moan and seokjin gets to feet and fucking _flees_. 

_/_/_/

ten minutes later, seokjin has successfully willed his erection away and is wondering if he’s got time to grab a snack before taehyung gets back. he left his phone in his room, entirely unequipped right now to deal with any of maknae line’s textual nonsense. he’s mostly zoned out, genuinely struggling to safely navigate the veritable minefield that his plain of thoughts has become today, when he hears the front door chime. 

ridiculously, his heart skips in his chest. 

but the commotion that follows is too loud, too many people. 

the banes of his existence are back. 

“weren’t you supposed to be out until late?” seokjin frowns as they traipse in in a row, like hot little demonic ducklings. 

“we got finished up early hyung. we’re just that good, i guess.” jungkook is first in line and he steps in and cups seokjin’s face in one hand to press a (mostly) chaste kiss to his mouth. 

namjoon is next and he’s grinning when he does the same. a little less chastely, but honestly who is keeping score? 

jimin is last and he pauses, seems to hesitate only for a second and then he’s lifting up on his toes to kiss seokjin while his lips are still pursed from jungkook, for namjoon. 

“brooooooooo,” jungkook says, low and astounded and seokjin has to agree. 

“same,” namjoon says, likely because jungkook finds it cute when he uses slang terms and phrases that he doesn’t understand. he’s probably going to ask namjoon to explain this one to him now and the two of them will sit somewhere making cow eyes at each for five hours. that’s usually how these moments go, for them. at least until jungkook starts asking namjoon how to say really fucked up sexually explicit shit in english and one of them has to waddle away to hide their boner. 

jimin stays standing in front of seokjin, his smile tentative like he’s waiting for something. 

seokjin loops an arm around jimin’s waist and reels him back in, kisses him this time. it’s a quick thing, soft and simple if not short and then seokjin presses a kiss to jimin’s cheek, to the tip of his nose, to both of his eyelids. he’s peppering jimin’s face with kisses by the time jimin starts to struggle, laughing as he fights his way out of seokjin’s hold. 

it’s a sweet moment. simple, but poignant and it settles seokjin somehow, makes him feel a little bit less out of control. 

“so, listen hyung,” jungkook is saying as he follows jimin down the corridor and namjoon and seokjin exchange an incredulous look, though seokjin doesn’t really know why. he’d thought they were long past the rookie mistake they’d sometimes made to underestimate jungkook. mostly, seokjin doesn’t put any limitations on what he thinks jungkook is capable of. for the most part, seokjin just doesn’t like to think about that all. 

“how was your afternoon, hyung?” namjoon asks, but before seokjin can respond hoseok comes up the corridor, dressed in just a pair of seokjin’s sweats that fall low on his hips and pool around his ankles. he’s towelling off his wet hair and the flex of his bicep makes seokjin’s mouth go dry. 

“oh. pretty good, it looks like,” namjoon answers his own question, making no effort whatsoever to conceal the fact he’s blatantly checking hoseok out too. 

“hey babe, did you just get back?” hoseok asks, dropping the towel onto the back of a chair to wrap an arm around namjoon’s waist and kiss him high on his cheekbone. namjoon blushes, looking at hoseok with wide, shy eyes and seokjin doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of this; of getting to see them be together like this. any of them. all of them. 

he slips away when namjoon’s hands start a slow but inevitable descent down hoseok’s bare back, smiling faintly and fondly as he goes. 

when he gets back to his room, there’s a message from taehyung waiting for him. 

he’s on his way home. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/

taehyung is bare faced, when he knocks on seokjin’s bedroom door. he’s wearing wire framed glasses and a knitted sweater and seokjin kind of wants to slam the door in his inhumanly attractive face. he’s got his hands in his pockets and his hair is darker lately, makes him look older. makes him look more serious, somehow. makes him look more like the threat that he has always been. 

“hey hyung, are -” 

seokjin doesn’t know what taehyung is about to say but hopefully it’s not something important because he doesn’t get to finish that sentence. 

because seokjin had maybe thought that he’d gotten himself somewhat together again after jungkook and namjoon, after hoseok, after jimin, after this whole day - this entire situation - but now he takes one look at taehyung and realizes he absolutely had not. 

the fabric of taehyung’s sweater is itchy against seokjin’s skin when he grabs a handful of it to yank taehyung into his room. just the first hard press of his mouth to taehyung’s makes a shiver fall down the length of his spine and he’d be endlessly mortified about the sound that rips out of him if taehyung didn’t answer with his own short, shocked, sharp intake of breath. 

taehyung showed up not even a full minute ago and seokjin is already almost out of his mind with want, feels so far past control or decorum or rational thought that it would be honestly concerning if it wasn’t happening here, like this. with taehyung. 

in short, it’s the taehyung effect at work. making seokjin unhinged in an instant. seokjin should be used to it by now and in a lot of ways, he is. but there might not ever come a day when he finds himself simply used to kissing taehyung and he’s okay with that. 

how taehyung has the wherewithal to kick the door closed behind him, seokjin has no idea, because as soon as seokjin kisses him, taehyung’s arms are banding low and tight around seokjin’s waist, not even missing a beat before he kisses back, kisses seokjin so fiercely, so sincerely and well and just being on the receiving end of all of that has seokjin’s eyes falling shut, his ears filling with white noise because he can’t handle having to catalogue taehyung with all of his senses at once, he’s barely holding on with a third of them out of commission right off the bat. 

they’re moving together, taehyung’s hands pushing up under seokjin’s clothes and spreading out big and hot across his back and then the whole world tilts out from underneath them and oh, they’re lying down now, seokjin on his back on the bed and taehyung leaning down over him. taehyung’s open mouthed kisses change, get firm and lingering and then seokjin tilts his chin and parts his lips only to be met with taehyung’s soft lips _and_ tongue and it’s pure instinct when he keeps kissing back because everything apart from his mouth has just shut the fuck down. 

one of taehyung’s hands slides down the outside of seokjin’s thigh, hooks up under his knee to get seokjin’s leg slung up over his hip and they’re both soft still when taehyung starts to grind down against him slow and fluid. in theory that should make it easier to handle, but in practice what it means is that seokjin has to lie there underneath taehyung and feel it happen as taehyung’s cock starts to get hard against him, because of him, and nothing about that is easy or even survivable. 

all seokjin can do is put both of his hands low on taehyung’s waist and feel the twist of his hips, encourage taehyung down, pull him closer, try to hold him down against himself so he can rut up because it’s nothing short of fucking crazy how good it feels, just frotting against each other like this. seokjin could come from this. seokjin has the horrible suspicion that he could come just from kissing taehyung and that’s not right, that shouldn’t be possible, he’s a grown man and he has built and honed for himself the kind of stamina that’s both incredibly impressive and very personally fulfilling. 

“you can tell me, taehyung-ah. i won’t tell anyone. you’re a demon, right?” seokjin barely has the breath to say it, has absolutely nothing with which to give the sentence any inflection or nuance and that only gets worse when taehyung sucks softly at his bottom lip, digs his teeth in a little. 

“i think i’m flattered, hyung,” taehyung laughs low against seokjin’s mouth and seokjin wonders if he looks aghast, because he feels aghast. “this is the nicest welcome i’ve gotten all week,” taehyung goes on and seokjin doesn’t understand what that means even a little bit. that must show on his face because taehyung sits back on his heels, settles on his knees between seokjin’s spread legs. he pulls his sweater up over his own head and then pushes his hands up into his hair to ruffle it rather than smooth it into place. seokjin’s hands are going for the zipper on his pants before he’s even properly processed the sight in front of him. he can’t be blamed for his actions, he’s entirely sure. he is merely a victim of the taehyung affect, after all. 

“namjoon and i had to compare crushes before he was convinced i wanted to touch him,” taehyung tells him and seokjin scoffs. on the inside. on the outside, he pushes his hand down into taehyung’s boxers. “hoseok was an accident. yoongi was kind of frantic, we were both so tired i think we were almost manic. jungkook had a panic attack and then the two of us cried fully clothed in his shower.” 

seokjin frowns at that, even goes so far as to slow the movement of his hand until he’s barely jerking taehyung off at all, mostly just holding his cock instead. 

“that all sounds kind of like a crash course in very emotional bonding. are you okay? do you want to talk about it? is there anything you need?” 

because seokjin hadn’t really thought about it before right now, but the way all of this is unfolding is very different for taehyung. he’s in the eye of this storm and yeah he’d kind of put himself there, pretty much staked his claim on it when he’d staked his claim on all of them, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a lot for him, more maybe than it is for the rest of them. maybe taehyung just wants to talk, just needs to cuddle. maybe he needs seokjin to just gently hold his dick and listen to him process his feelings. seokjin would be down. 

“actually,” taehyung says, biting nervously on the inside of his cheek. “there is something i kind of need, maybe?” 

seokjin has no idea what that ‘maybe’ is in aid of. he has zero clue why taehyung is nervous. seokjin would do anything for him. whatever he needs, he’s got. nothing else matters. 

he sits up and wraps his arms around taehyung’s waist, looks up at him and gives him his full and absolute attention. 

“anything you want, tae. what do you need from hyung?” 

taehyung gently brushes seokjin’s bangs back out of his face and kisses him on his bared forehead. he loops his arms around seokjin’s shoulders and just holds onto him. 

“the thing is, hyung,” he starts and then he sighs, his eyes cutting away from seokjin. “hobi and jungkook and yoongi and joonie were a lot. like, so much.” oh no. they pushed him too far. they went about this too quickly, too clumsy and blinded by their excitement. seokjin’s stomach drops. this is terrible. this is awful. “and it was great, it really was. every night this last week has been incredible. mind-blowingly so.” 

but he needs a break. he needs them to take it easy, to slow down and let him catch his breath. seokjin is sure that’s what taehyung is going to say. that’s entirely understandable. it makes sense. seokjin gets it and that’s absolutely what they’re going to do. 

“but they all wanted me to fuck them and that was super cool, really very -” taehyung lifts a hand from seokjin’s shoulders to do an enthusiastic thumbs up sign. “very dope, but the only action my ass has seen throughout this whole thing was namjoon fucking me with a dildo and that was also very dope but i kind of really need to come on a cock, hyung.” 

seokjin stares at him. 

seokjin blinks. 

and then stares at him harder. 

but no matter how hard he stares, no matter how many times he blinks, no matter what angle he tilts his head to look at taehyung from, the patiently waiting look on taehyung’s face doesn’t change and none of what he just said rearranges itself to make more sense to seokjin’s brain. 

“so what you’re saying -” he starts, squinting and really concentrating because it’s important that he gets this exactly right, “what you’re telling me … is that you need to get fucked.” he means for it to be a question, but again the ability to apply inflection to his words evades him. just making legible sounds come out of his mouth is its own hardship right now. 

taehyung slumps a little, sits lower. his hands fall down into his lap and he looks down at them. 

“it’s not a big deal. if you don’t like topping or if you wanna get fucked i can do that for sure. i’d love to. for real, hyung,” taehyung lifts his eyes back to seokjin’s, just for a moment and then they fall away again. “but i only really noticed the pattern last night and i thought joon fucking me with a toy would scratch the itch, so to speak, but really all it did was make me think about how sometimes i buy sex toys that i think most closely resemble your cock so last night was kind of like me fucking namjoon while you were fucking me and that was … a lot. i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all day. but really, hyung,” taehyung lifts his face again, his expression purely earnest, “it can wait until whenever you want, if you want something else instead.” 

seokjin stares at him. taehyung starts to look away and seokjin takes his face in his hands, holds him still so he can keep staring at him. 

“there’s a lot to unpack there, tae,” seokjin says and it’s wild how his voice sounds so steady and composed even to his own ears when he’s in the very process of having his melted brain leak out of them. this must be the famed ‘autopilot’ he has read about, because he’s definitely not the one flying this fucking plane after everything taehyung just said. 

“let’s tackle it in order, shall we?” taehyung is looking at seokjin now, but it’s still from underneath his eyelashes. he still looks unsure and seokjin can’t stand that. 

“first of all - there’s seven of us. i don’t think any of us are gonna be strictly topping or bottoming. with the wide variety of hot options we’ve got? please, taehyung-ah. have even a modicum of respect for me, if no one else.” this gets taehyung smiling, at least and seokjin has to press a kiss to the lifted corner of his mouth before he can continue. 

“second of all, it’s a shame that you haven’t gotten fucked properly yet. a crime, honestly. i know you were born tragically blessed in the dick department just like the rest of your kim line counterparts, but that absolutely doesn’t mean you don’t also have a kind of bewitchingly hot ass, too. don’t let people pidgeon hole you, sweetheart.” taehyung is almost laughing, now, and the tension is gone from around his eyes. when his shoulders fall, it’s with something that looks like relief. 

“third and most importantly - the fact that you buy sex toys with my dick in mind just immediately became my proudest accomplishment to date. what’s a daesang? i neither know nor care, all of a sudden.” taehyung is grinning when he lifts his arms back up around seokjin’s shoulders, when he presses his face into the curve of seokjin’s neck to muffle his laughter. 

“fourth - i’m gonna spend the whole night fucking you, if that’s what you want. if you need me to fuck you until you can’t take it anymore, i’ll do that. and then i’ll let you take a nap, maybe get you a snack and then do it all over again.” when taehyung sits up straight again, any sense of nervousness or reservation is completely gone from his face. he looks at seokjin hungrily now and something inside of seokjin preens, at that. 

“but fifth and actually most importantly, taehyung-ah,” he says, “what you want matters. you never have to be afraid to ask any of us for whatever it is that you need. tell me you know that.” 

again, seokjin knows that taehyung knows that. but he also knows that any of the others would have fucked taehyung if he’d asked them, which means he didn’t, until namjoon. taehyung and jimin sometimes seem to be locked in a battle to the death to be the most self-sacrificing member of this group, which is both really sweet of them and also why it absolutely blows seokjin’s mind to think about the two of them fucking. but the pure unholy hotness of two people totally unselfish about their own pleasure basically competing to make one another feel good aside, the two of them have been known to take it too far on occasion and this absolutely seems like one of those. 

“i do know that, hyung. i’m not shy about asking for what i want, i promise.” seokjin narrows his eyes at him, because taehyung was absolutely just shy about asking seokjin for what he wanted. “or, okay. i won’t be from now on. but it’s kind of different the first time. i wanted to give them what they wanted and i wanted all that too. it’s just that now i want something else. and it’s kind of nerve-wracking because i want it from you specifically and i didn’t know for sure where you stood on the issue and -” 

“hey,” seokjin cuts in before taehyung can ramble any further. “honesty and transparency is how this is going to work, okay? sure it’ll take a while before we all figure out our dynamics and kinks and how that’s going to work, but like i said - there’s seven of us, taehyung. chances are, someone is going to be up for whatever you need. that’s a not insubstantial bonus we earned for being in love with six people at once, i think.” 

“but that’s the thing, hyung. i am. in love with all of you. with you,” taehyung says and even though seokjin had mostly known that too, it still makes his heart do something violently celebratory in his chest. “and i want to make you all happy. it makes me happy to give you all what you want.” 

seokjin shakes his head slightly, fondly. how an actual demon can be so sweet, he has no clue. he’s pretty sure this is exactly what makes the maknae line so utterly fucking impossible to handle, though. seokjin feels like he’s in a constant state of whiplash from how all four of them go in an instant from being the sweetest, kindest, most loving and caring boys to being something like an AI designed and brought to life solely to challenge seokjin. sexually. and that’s not even to mention the direct threat they pose to his self-acknowledged tenuous self control. they can go from warming his heart to drop kicking his libido in the space of one second, one sentence and finally wrangling them into something like manageability is going to take him years more, he’s pretty sure. he’s excited about it. 

“okay, tae. that’s very sweet of you. you’re a very kind and thoughtful young man and hyung both likes and admires that about you. but please think of the rest of us, too. you don’t think it makes us happy to make you happy, too? you have to let us get to give you what you want too, taehyung-ah.” 

this seems to take a second for taehyung to process. he thinks about it, chewing at the corner of his mouth. 

“i guess i never really considered that angle of it, hyung,” he admits and seokjin can’t say he’s surprised because jimin had said the exact same thing, almost word for word, when he and seokjin and yoongi had had this conversation a couple of months back. “but wait, does that mean you’re gonna fuck me just because that’s what i want, or …” 

seokjin startles even himself with his quick burst of laughter. 

“taehyung-ah. sweetheart. i would absolutely do so many things for no other reason than that you wanted me to. like, so many things. almost all of the things, if you want to get specific about it.” 

“oh,” taehyung says. he sounds disappointed and seokjin has to laugh at him again, even louder this time. 

he has to tip taehyung’s chin down to get their mouths lined up when he lifts his face to kiss him. it is not a sweet kiss. seokjin is not gentle about it and taehyung is short of breath, almost gasping for it by the time seokjin lets him pull away. 

“but i’m not gonna fuck you because you want me to. i’m gonna fuck you because you’re super hot and i really, really wanna see what your tight little ass looks like bouncing on my cock. sorry if that doesn’t feel romantic enough for you or whatever,” seokjin shrugs, lifting his eyebrows. 

“hyung,” taehyung says, his chest still rising and falling, breathing shallow, “there’s nothing romantic about any of the things i want you to do to me.” 

demons. demons in seokjin’s own home, in his very own bed sometimes. he is blessed, truly and bountifully. 

“well then,” seokjin tells taehyung very seriously. he sighs deeply and rolls his sleeves up for added affect. “i guess you’d better show me where you’d like me to start, in that case.” 

taehyung grins at him, wide and sharp with his eyes positively gleaming and seokjin only fears for his life a fairly reasonable amount. which is to say - completely and totally. 

_/_/_/_/

getting naked together is a surprisingly unfraut affair. 

generally, when taehyung starts stripping, a dressing room can clear out in ten seconds flat. sometimes he threatens to take his shirt off just because they’re annoying him. 

but now it’s different. now it’s taehyung griping at seokjin for having “so many fucking clothes on, jesus christ have you been listening to hobi-hyung’s sermons on layering again?” now it’s seokjin darting in to nip at taehyung’s ear when he bends to strip his socks off. now it’s the two of them giggling at one another’s haste. 

it’s fun. it’s familiar and it’s comfortable. 

and then taehyung drops his boxers onto the top of the pile their clothes make on the floor and comes to stand next to the bed and all of a sudden it’s not any of those things at all because what it is is excruciatingly, unbearably charged again in an instant. 

seokjin is gonna need a neck brace for his whiplash. or maybe for how he’s about to skullfuck himself with taehyung’s cock. 

taehyung catches him staring and seokjin should probably look away. he means to, he tries to, even. but he also takes back whatever dumb shit he said to jungkook this morning about being cock compelled because that’s exactly what he is, right now. it’s getting hard to keep the spit that’s pooling in his mouth from falling out onto the floor between them. 

even when taehyung steps in between seokjin’s spread knees and cups a hand under his chin, it’s hard to look away. taehyung is slowly fisting his cock with his other hand and seokjin thinks - hysterically - that taehyung really can’t hold it against anyone who takes one look at him and immediately presents themselves for fucking, please and thank you kind sir. seokjin is absolutely going to ride taehyung to within an inch of his life one of these days, maybe less. he’s a demon, he can take it. but first, he’s got other plans. 

“you like it, hyung?” taehyung asks, his voice so low that it hits seokjin somewhere near his solar plexus. he’s still fisting himself and even the sound of that, just the sight of the head shining when he smooths pre-come over it makes seokjin feel like he’s never seen another cock in his life. it pains him immensely to admit it, but jungkook had been right when he’d said that getting to touch seokjin had made him feel like he’d never been touched before even though he’s getting fucked like a martyr for the cause right now. seokjin totally gets it. 

he nods, thinks maybe he licks at his lower lip but he’s not sure about that, not sure about anything because he’s getting kind of dizzy from switching his gaze so quickly between taehyung’s face and his quite frankly gorgeous dick. 

taehyung’s hand goes to the back of seokjin’s neck now and seokjin decides to just give up blinking. it’s a drain on his resources and he’s kind of tight on those right now. 

“do you want to suck it, hyung? wanna get your mouth on my cock for me?” 

stupidly, but also the exact opposite of that, seokjin whimpers. 

it genuinely pains him to take his eyes off taehyung’s hand slowly stroking himself but when he manages it, taehyung rewards him by pulling him forward just enough that if seokjin stuck his tongue out, he’d get a taste. he doesn’t go any further than that, though. he stays where he is; looking down at seokjin with his eyes incredibly dark and one eyebrow raised, waiting. 

“can i?” seokjin asks, already prepared to beg if he has to. “please?” 

taehyung’s fingers push up into seokjin’s hair, his fingernails scoring his scalp gently and making him shiver for it, making him shiver all over again when taehyung’s fingers knot in the long hair at his crown. 

“of course you can, hyung. you only had to ask.” 

seokjin’s mouth is already open when taehyung lifts the head of his cock to his lips. seokjin kind of means to stay still and let taehyung feed every inch of his cock into his waiting mouth, but then the fat head of it trips in over the stretch of his bottom lip and he can’t help it, he sits forward and knocks taehyung’s hand away. he curls his tongue around the shaft and gets his nose pressed to the soft skin of taehyung’s belly and then he hollows his cheeks and sucks. taehyung isn’t doing anything with the grip he has on seokjin’s hair, is just standing there with his face tipped up towards the ceiling when seokjin glances up, so seokjin very literally takes matters into his own hands and cups his hands up around the back of taehyung’s thighs to make him move, to make sure that he’s got taehyung’s cock as far down his throat as it can go. 

the sounds it makes when seokjin pulls off are nothing short of completely fucking filthy and it only makes seokjin hotter, makes him want it that much more. he pulls all the way off and spits into his hand, smoothes it down the shaft of taehyung’s cock and then just strokes him a few times like that. he waits until taehyung looks down at him, his neck flushed and his bottom lip tugged up between his teeth and then and only then does he sit forward and get his face full of taehyung’s cock again. he pauses this time, gathers himself for a second and then carefully, purposefully swallows around taehyung’s cock. 

taehyung’s groan makes seokjin’s cock kick against his stomach. 

“holy fuck, i - _shit_. how are you this good with your mouth, hyung?” taehyung’s voice is strained, high and breathless when seokjin pulls off again and keeps fisting his shaft, lifts taehyung’s cock up out of his way so he can get his mouth around his balls. he sucks wetly at them in turn. “oh fuck. fuck! jungkook is gonna die. this is going to kill him.” 

that makes seokjin laugh, which in turn makes taehyung press his thighs together and gasp. 

“hey,” he says, tapping at the back of taehyung’s thigh to get his attention back on him, “are you cleaned up? cus i kind of really wanna put my tongue in your ass.” 

now, taehyung’s hand makes use of the hold he has in seokjin’s hair. when seokjin opens his mouth over the head of taehyung’s cock again, taehyung pulls him forward, just slightly, just a little. until seokjin hums and looks up, nodding with wide eyes until taehyung pulls him a little further, a little harder. he rocks forward on his heels, too, properly fucking seokjin’s face now. seokjin loves this. seokjin has always loved this, but it’s something else entirely when it’s taehyung that’s pulling his hair and choking him with his dick. god, he really wants to get at his asshole already. 

“well?” he prompts, coughing a little around the word when taehyung lets up to let him breathe. “can i?” 

he chokes on nothing, on empty air when taehyung’s response is to tap the head of his cock against his bottom lip and say “i don’t know, can you? what’s the magic word, hyung?” 

seokjin has to drop a hand into his own lap, has to grip the base of his own dick hard and then stroke himself in commiseration, in supplication maybe. 

“please? please can i, taehyung?” 

taehyung shakes his hair back out of his face and then lifts one of his feet up onto the bed next to seokjin’s thigh, nods distractedly as he guides seokjin’s mouth back down over his cock. 

“of course you can, hyung,” he says, with his eyebrows furrowed for how hard he’s fucking seokjin’s face now. seokjin closes his eyes, times his breathing as best he can and stays open for it, takes it however taehyung wants to give it to him. “you asked so nicely,” taehyung wants to give it to him fast and shallow, it seems, because he stops now to jerk his shaft with just the head of his cock resting on the flat of seokjin’s tongue, his mouth open wide and a little spit dribbling out of both sides of his mouth. “such a polite hyung, asking for what you want. you’ve needed to ask me for a lot today, huh?” 

it’s not fair. it’s new, still and seokjin’s groin tightens up so hotly that he almost doubles over from it.

“had to ask me if you could come, this morning. had to ask me to come home and fuck you, after that. and now you want my permission for every little thing, it seems like. is that it, hyung? you like having me decide for you?” 

seokjin closes his lips around the head of taehyung’s cock and sucks at it, nods and tries to sink lower, but taehyung doesn’t let him, his hand in seokjin’s hair pulling him back. 

“ah, ah. answer me, hyung. do you like me being in charge? being in control of what you can and can’t do?” 

seokjin’s breathlessness has little to do with sucking taehyung’s cock and a lot to do with what taehyung is saying. what he himself is about to say. 

“yes,” he tells taehyung, looking up at him because he wants to see taehyung’s reaction to that, feels a little less thrown off kilter by this part of himself that seemed so new to him at first, but isn’t actually, isn’t really when he thinks about it. the only thing that’s new about it is that he trusts taehyung enough to want to do this, with him. “i like having to ask you for permission. i like that you get to decide what i can and can’t do. i want that. i want you, like that.” 

taehyung steps back, steps away from the bed but doesn’t go far. he leans down, his hands planted on either side of seokjin’s hips, to kiss him deeply, dirty. 

“well i guess i can give that to you, if you want it, hyung.” he grins as he says it, smile sunshine bright like he’s not single-handedly dismantling seokjin physically, spiritually and existentially right now. 

“so let’s negotiate our terms,” taehyung says and then he’s dive-bombing onto the bed, sitting cross-legged behind seokjin and waiting, it seems, for seokjin to turn around and face him, because once seokjin does, he claps twice, decisively and then says, eyes bright, “do you want to go first or will i?” 

_/_/_/_/

talking it through with taehyung is both an informative and torturous experience, probably thanks in no small part to how they’re both naked and varying degrees of hard still, throughout the course of the conversation. 

it’s simple enough to hash out, thank god. 

taehyung likes being in charge, seokjin can barely sit still at the thought of letting taehyung be in charge, so the hardest part, all things considered, is trying to keep a straight face when taehyung tells him that his safe word is ‘miguk.’ 

but taehyung laughs at himself, laughs at seokjin too and by the time they’ve figured out everything they need to, seokjin’s cheeks kind of hurt just from smiling. 

“this is fun, i like this part,” he says and taehyung nods enthusiastically. 

“right? i can’t wait to do this with everyone. it’s fun, educational and hot, all of my favourites things!” he’s back to being almost his usual self, now; all earnest eyes and genuine, heartfelt wonder. he’s really cute like this, which still confuses seokjin considering what they were doing twenty minutes ago. 

and speaking of. 

“so are we good to go? anything else we need to talk about?” this part was important, but seokjin really wants to get back to the part where he gets to kiss taehyung. that might be his favourite part, honestly. he misses it already. it’s been too long. 

“i’m good if you’re good, hyung,” taehyung says and then he’s crawling towards seokjin on his hands and knees and seokjin is decidedly not good, because he is struggling to remain sentient, instead. 

“if i don’t make it out of this alive, tell yoongi i loved him the most, will you?” seokjin asks and his giggle turns into a shriek when taehyung decides to hug tackle him for his crimes. 

“oh you’re gonna pay for that, hyung,” taehyung says, rolling over onto his back and then tugging seokjin down after him, over him. 

“yes, please,” seokjin says, sliding his hands up under taehyung’s thighs to get at his ass. 

he means it, he really does. 

and wonderfully, so does taehyung. 

_/_/_/_/

taehyung makes seokjin beg for a full five minutes before he’ll let him rim him. 

he locks his legs up around seokjin’s hips and lets seokjin grind against him, lets him get their cocks pressed together and sticky between their stomachs while he kisses him teasingly sometimes, very very seriously other times. but that’s all. 

seokjin asks. and then he asks nicely. and then he asks really nicely. and then he begs. 

“please, please let me eat you out,” he is pleading, now. “i’ll make it so good for you, taehyung-ah. wanna get you wet and messy with my mouth, with my fingers. please.” 

taehyung sighs. 

“fine, but i’m not getting on my hands and knees for you. i wanna see your face when you’re tonguing me open for your cock,” taehyung finally relents. 

“okay, great. sure. however you want,” seokjin agrees quickly, easily, because he’s dying to feel taehyung clench for his tongue. 

they decide on seokjin getting on his knees next to the bed and taehyung lying on his back with his ass hanging off the edge, his thighs spread apart around seokjin’s shoulder. 

at the first proper glimpse of him, seokjin’s cock throbs with anticipation. taehyung’s hole is waxed, his skin soft and smooth. when he cups taehyung’s cock and balls up out of the way, taehyung’s thighs tremble and seokjin likes that, he loves that. he leans in and licks over taehyung’s hole and gets to see it clench, gets to see taehyung throw an arm over his face to muffle whatever sound he just made. 

“i want to hear you. please can i hear you?” seokjin asks and taehyung nods, takes his arm away and sits up on his elbows. 

when he presses in properly, his tongue pushing taehyung’s rim open just around the tip, taehyung’s cock jumps in his hand. 

“holy fuck, hyung,” taehyung says and seokjin glances up at him, sits back on his heels but makes up for it by fisting taehyung’s cock loosely. 

“has no one ever done this to you, before?” he asks, because taehyung’s awe does not sound like your run of the mill ‘oh my god i’m having sex with kim seokjin’ wonderment. he sounds almost winded. 

“nope,” taehyung says, brushing his sweaty bangs out of his eyes. “this is officially the first time i’ve ever gotten fucked by someone’s tongue. you’re kind of taking my virginity right now, hyung.” 

and that’s criminally hot. not the virginity thing, that’s just a lame social construct. but getting to be the first person to fuck taehyung open with his tongue? yeah that’s not ever going to be something he doesn’t brag to the rest of them about. shame on the rest of his group, honestly. 

seokjin decides to take his time with it, given the weight of the occasion and taehyung is glad to let him. by the time seokjin has him open around his tongue and three of his fingers, both of them are sweaty and groaning, taehyung’s fingers white knuckled on his own thighs where he’s holding himself open for seokjin to work. 

“hyung i can’t, you have to stop. i’m gonna come,” he says and seokjin pulls back but keeps one finger inside him, crooks it gently, just a tease against his prostate. 

“you can come like this if you want, i’ll wait for you to get hard again before i fuck you,” seokjin offers, because he had not been messing around when he offered to fuck taehyung all night. neither of them have a schedule until late tomorrow afternoon, he’d checked in advance. 

“that’s nice of you, sweet hyung,” taehyung says but he lets his legs drop back down to the floor. “i’m too sensitive after i come, though. you rimming me has already done enough of a number on me, i can’t handle double the over stimulation. not on this current schedule we’re working to.” he sits up fully and leans down to help seokjin up off the floor. “i’m kind of in demand right now, if you hadn’t noticed.” 

seokjin laughs at him and then mimes brushing his teeth when he crosses the floor to the bathroom. after he’s done that and spits his mouthwash into the sink, he calls over his shoulder; 

“i don’t know about that. i think jungkook is giving you a run for your money, actually.”

when he comes back to the bed, taehyung is lying with one hand folded back behind his head and the other leisurely fingering lube into himself. he’s smiling faintly, almost dreamily. 

“he is, isn’t he? what a turn around after our disastrous start. god, i love him. he makes me so proud,” taehyung says and seokjin means to frown at that or at least wrinkle his nose appropriately but stays staring slack jawed and blank faced at taehyung fingering himself, instead. 

“come on hyung,” taehyung says, drawing his attention, getting him back on track. his smile becomes anything _but_ faint. “don’t you have something you wanna ask me?” 

_/_/_/_/

taehyung does get on his hands and knees for seokjin, now. 

he also gets seokjin pressed right up against him and then makes him ask to fuck him. 

“what are you gonna do if i say no?” he asks, glancing back at seokjin over his shoulder. he looks serious about that question, no mirth whatsoever on his face, no hint of teasing in his tone and seokjin’s heart thumps hard in his chest. his cock fucking throbs, though and it doesn’t make sense but it still happens because he loves that taehyung can tell him yes or no or anything else he decides right now and seokjin will accept that, won’t question it or complain, wouldn’t dream of trying to argue because what taehyung says goes and that’s exactly how seokjin wants it. 

“i’m not gonna do anything,” seokjin says, something like pure bliss making his vision get a little hazy, out of focus around the edges. “i won’t do anything you don’t tell me to do,” he says, completely honest. 

taehyung snorts and it’s almost, almost mean. it could nearly sound condescending and it’s no wonder whatsoever that some form of this is what gets jungkook off because it’s so hot that seokjin kind of wants to cry anyway. taehyung can do whatever he wants with seokjin, can tell him to do anything at all and seokjin will do it. seokjin _can_ do it because he trusts taehyung so much. 

“yeah, i’m never getting tired of that,” taehyung says, letting his head drop low between his shoulders. he shifts back against seokjin, pushes his ass to the hot, hard line of seokjin’s cock. “i am getting tired of not getting fucked, though, so come on, hyung. give me what i want.” 

his intake of breath is sharp and loud when seokjin gets his hole stretched around the head of his cock and then it sounds like he groans constantly, through gritted teeth, as seokjin pushes slowly in. when he’s all the way inside him, he reaches around taehyung’s hip and cups his cock, strokes him back to full hardness while taehyung huffs and groans and tries to sit back further on seokjin’s cock, even though that’s not possible. 

“fuck, this is different when it’s your actual cock and not just an approximate plastic replica,” taehyung says lowly, barely audible and seokjin would laugh but he’s too busy trying to remember how to breathe, instead. taehyung’s ass is tight and his cock is big and dripping in seokjin’s hand and he bites down on his own tongue, focuses on not coming before he even gets to fuck taehyung properly. 

“can i move? do you want me to?” he asks and taehyung swears and drops down onto his elbows. the change in angle must do something for him, seems to do a whole lot for him actually, because he doesn’t answer seokjin, just rocks forward on his knees instead. he fucks himself on seokjin’s cock and seokjin stays still, doesn’t think about moving because taehyung hasn’t told him that he can, yet. 

“do you want to, hyung? do you want to fuck me? or can i just keep using you like this? tell me what you want, hyung. ask me for it.” he’s barely moving now, just grinding back on seokjin’s cock with shallow little circles of his hips and nothing has ever felt this good, seokjin has never ever been turned on the way he is by this. his brain gets scrambled for a second, the transition from feeling to thinking tripping him up. he wants to fuck taehyung. taehyung wants him to fuck him. does taehyung want seokjin to let him use his cock like this? or does taehyung want seokjin to ask for what he wants? are those different things? it doesn’t seem like those should be different things. 

taehyung pulls almost all the way off seokjin’s cock and then sits back, fucks himself hard and seokjin stops thinking because he doesn’t have to think. taehyung just wants him to ask for what he wants and that’s not complicated at all. 

“i want to fuck you,” he says, making sure his hand stays loose around taehung’s cock, making sure he’s moving as little as he possibly can because he doesn’t have permission to, yet. “can i move? i really want to fuck you. please.” 

to his horror, taehyung moves off his cock completely. he doesn’t know what his face does but when taehyung turns around and gets up on his knees in front of him, he rubs his hands gently, soothingly over the rounds of seokjin’s shoulders and kisses him, his tongue teasing against seokjin’s. 

“of course i’m gonna let you fuck me, baby. i just need to switch up the position or i’m gonna come too soon and i don’t want that, i wanna feel you,” taehyung reassures him and it feels like seokjin’s heart kickstarts in his chest. 

taehyung gets on his back and lifts his own legs into the air, holds them up and instructs seokjin to get close, to come here, until seokjin’s thighs are spread wide with taehyung’s ass cradled in between them. 

“lean back, hyung. watch yourself fuck me,” taehyung says and seokjin does. pushing back into him is pure and absolute relief and watching taehyung’s ass swallow up his cock makes him reach for taehyung’s thigh, just to have something to hold. when he starts to fuck taehyung, taehyung’s eyes roll up into his head. 

“yeah. yes, fuck! that’s perfect, that’s so good, hyung,” he groans, staying still and letting seokjin do all the work; thrusting forward into taehyung with his weight balanced on his hand behind him, pulling taehyung down onto his cock with the hand he has hooked around taehyung’s thigh. both of taehyung’s hands stay up under his knees, holding himself open for seokjin and it’s the best thing seokjin has ever seen, absolutely the prettiest sight he’s witnessed so far in his life. 

“do you need anything else? is this enough? is this good?” he asks and taehyung shakes his head at him, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth pinched. 

“you’re too fucking hot to be this perfect, hyung, don’t do this to me,” he says, almost imploringly and it’s dumb because of the two of them, only one of them is a demon that’s been sexually terrorizing the whole group for years now and it’s definitely not seokjin. “just keep doing what you’re doing. fuck me like you want to, hyung. you can have me how you want me.” 

how seokjin wants taehyung is like this: with his chest sweaty and heaving under the breaths he’s panting for. with his back arching up off the bed every time seokjin pushes in and makes sure to nail his prostate. with his fingernails biting into his own skin. moaning for it in between swearing low and filthy, in between telling seokjin over and over again how well he’s fucking him, how good his cock feels inside him, how much he’d wanted this; been waiting for it. 

and seokjin has him, just like that. 

“m’gonna come,” taehyung tells him, his voice breaking on a high keening sound when seokjin grips his thigh harder, fucks him hard enough that taehyung’s cock bounces up against his own stomach. 

“can i touch you? i wanna feel you come on my cock and in my hand,” seokjin asks and taehyung grins, looks almost mindless, feral with pleasure. 

“you can. please,” taehyung says and seokjin sits forward so fast that his vision swims for a second. he has to flick his sweat wet hair out of his eyes so he can see properly. he keeps his hand where it is on taehyung’s thigh, grips him a little harder when he feels him start to tremble. he uses that hold on him to keep him still to take his cock. he fucks him harder, just barely, barely faster and he wraps his right hand around taehyung’s cock, works his fist over the head until taehyung locks up under him, around him. 

“holy fuuuuuuuuuuck,” taehyung groans as he comes and it almost sounds like he sings some of it, it’s so drawn out and lovely. his cock jerks in seokjin’s hand, shooting ropes of come up over his own bellybutton, the last spurts seokjin wrings out of him dripping back down over seokjin’s knuckles, slipping wetly down his wrist. he jerks taehyung until he starts to squirm, too sensitive and then he brings his hand up to his mouth and sucks taehyung’s come off his own hand. 

taehyung’s eyes go so wide it’s almost comical, but seokjin doesn’t have time to laugh right now, seokjin has a very pressing matter to deal with. 

“i think i - can i come, taehyung-ah? i wanna come. let me come inside you,” he babbles, mostly mindless himself now, still fucking taehyung with hard, shallow thrusts. 

“next time we do this i’m gonna edge the fuck out of you but i’ll let you off the hook this time,” taehyung tells him. “you can come now. you’ve been so good, such an obedient boy for me, hyung.” 

seokjin pushes in deep, pulls all the way out and then shoves in again, desperate for it now and when his balls draw up and he feels himself start to come in taehyung, his eyes well up, stinging with tears. 

he plants his hands in the sheets on either side of taehyung’s ribs and slumps forward, his cock still jerking in taehyung’s ass when taehyung sits up, drops his legs down over seokjin’s thighs so he can reach for seokjin’s face. 

“so good for me. perfect. you’re perfect,” taehyung tells him and he’s smiling when he leans in to kiss the tears off seokjin’s cheeks. 

time stretches out strangely around them, seems to almost ripple around seokin somehow, suspended and then not. passing so fast and then too slow. 

when he becomes totally and fully aware of himself again, he’s sitting in the middle of the bed and taehyung is behind him, his chest pressed to seokjin’s back and his arms folded around his middle. 

seokjin makes a sound, starts to ask a question, maybe, but taehyung steps in when he trails off after a few broken syllables. 

“you’re okay, i’m here. everything’s okay, hyung, i’ve got you,” taehyung tells him. “can you hear me? are my words making sense to you?” 

seokjin nods. his head is swimming and he feels kind of tingly, strangely sensitive all over but he’s warm where taehyung is pressed against him. 

“i understand you. i think i’m -” he doesn’t quite know how to finish that sentence. it feels like his brain is straining, reaching for something that’s just slightly out of reach. 

“you were in subspace, i’m pretty sure, hyung. maybe still kind of are. how do you feel now?” 

seokjin knew what subspace was before today. they’d talked about it, during their negotiations. they’d both known it was possible and seokjin hadn’t been afraid of it. he’s not afraid now. 

“i feel good. you’re here. i feel good,” he says, because the two things are tied directly. he needs taehyung right now, more than he has ever needed him before. and he’s not afraid because he knows that taehyung will stay right here with him, won’t leave him until he doesn’t need him anymore. 

“you did good. you were so good for me, hyung,” taehyung tells him and seokjin tingles all over, shivers and pulls taehyung’s arms tighter around himself. taehyung presses his nose into seokjin’s hair and kisses the back of his neck, lays his cheek there, then. 

time settles around them, moving normally for seokjin again now and he doesn’t lose awareness of himself again. he just feels really, really good. soreness is starting to creep into his limbs, his legs aching a little but even that feels good, somehow. taehyung stays snugged up behind him, doesn’t move except to press kisses to the line of his shoulders, to trail his fingers in slow, sweeping patterns across seokjin’s thighs. 

“i think i need to get up, now,” seokjin says, finally. “i want to stretch and then shower, i think. will you come with me?” 

taehyung lifts his chin up over seokjin’s shoulder and hums, the feeling of it so nice against seokjin’s skin, his face smiling where seokjin can see it from out of the corner of his eye. 

“of course i will. i’ll come anywhere you wanna go,” taehyung tells him and seokjin knows he means that heartfeltly. 

“shower first. then stretching. then cuddles?” seokjin asks and taehyung nods, waiting for seokjin to get up first before he follows him, never far behind. 

they climb into seokjin’s shower together and just let the water warm them up, fall pleasantly on their shoulders for a while. then taehyung starts to clean himself up, soaps himself down but pauses instantly when seokjin reaches to still the wrist he’s just dropped behind himself. 

“can i? will you let me clean up my mess?” seokjin asks and taehyung pushes his fingers down into seokjin’s palm, gets their fingers laced together and just holds his hand like that for a moment. 

“if you want to, hyung. of course you can.” 

so seokjin fingers his own come back out of taehyung’s ass and feels vaguely, distantly euphoric as he does. taehyung holds onto him with both hands, holds him close and alternates between soft gasps and murmured praise until seokjin feels weak kneed, feels almost like he comes again, but not physically. 

after that, taehyung reaches for the body wash and touches seokjin all over, to clean him up. he shampoos and conditions his hair for him, hastily does the same for himself and then goes right back to taking care of seokjin, wrapping him in a big soft towel when he gets out of the shower and rubbing his hands over seokjin’s arms. 

“can i dress you, hyung?” taehyung asks when they leave the bathroom and seokjin loves this. he wants to do this again. he wants to do it for someone else, too. he wants all of them to get to feel this way, if they want to. if they’ll trust him the way he trusts taehyung. 

he nods and taehyung smiles at him, kisses him after every item of clothing he puts on seokjin. taehyung has him sit down so he can tug his socks on and when he’s done he stays where he is, rests his head against seokjin’s thigh and looks at him wonderingly. 

“you’re kind of incredible, hyung,” taehyung tells him. “you’re so brave, letting yourself be this vulnerable. i’m so glad it was with me. thank you for trusting me.” 

seokjin runs his fingers through taehyung’s wet hair, thinks maybe he’d like to dry it off for him, in a minute. in a while. 

“i love you,” seokjin tells him, because it seems like the quickest and simplest way to say everything that he means. 

taehyung blushes. and then he presses his hands to his pinked cheeks and laughs at himself. 

“i love you, too. i feel like ‘love’ is not even a strong enough word for how i feel about you, honestly, hyung.” 

“i feel the same way. i feel that way, too,” seokjin says because it’s huge, what he feels. it’s immense and it’s not just confined to here, to taehyung. it’s all over this apartment, spilling in and out of every room in it, these walls alive with how he feels for the people who wander around in between them. 

“hey, do you think everyone is back, by now? would they still be awake, do you think?” seokjin asks and taehyung doesn’t ask why he wants to know, only considers the question for a second and then reaches for his phone. 

“well, jungkook is spamming the group chat with pictures of a bruise namjoon apparently bit into his arm this morning and everyone’s pretty … active about their responses, except for jimin and yoongi. so we’re all here and mostly still awake, from the looks of things.” 

“cool. good,” seokjin decides. “do you think you could change the sheets for us? i want to go say goodnight to everyone.” 

he wants so badly to see all of them, all of a sudden. he needs them all, not just taehyung. 

“sure thing, hyung. do you need anything else? are you hungry? thirsty?” taehyung is already stripping the sheets off the bed, soft classical music playing low on his phone when he sets it back on seokjin’s bedside table. 

“i’m okay. i’ll grab us some waters from the kitchen?” seokjin asks and taehyung nods, comes to kiss seokjin on his forehead. 

“i’m here. i’m right here and i’m not going anywhere. i’ll be here when you come back, hyung,” taehyung tells him and seokjin knows that that’s true. 

“i won’t be long. i’ll come back to you,” seokjin promises. 

and then he sets off. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

seokjin knocks on namjoon’s door first. 

there’s a pause, a shuffle of feet and then namjoon appears. 

god, he’s so handsome. seokjin loves him so much. 

“hyung, what are - are you okay?” he asks, his face clouding with concern and it’s only then that seokjin notices that he’s crying again. he wipes his tears away and laughs softly. 

“yeah, i’m fine. sorry. i just had super overwhelmingly great sex with taehyung and i kind of missed the rest of you. wanted to say goodnight. just wanted to see you, actually.” 

namjoon looks abruptly like _he’s_ going to cry, at that. 

“hyung,” he says like he’s asking for something and then he’s reaching for seokjin, pulling him forward into his arms. 

he’s warm against seokjin, the bare skin of his arms so soft under seokjin’s hands and he smells so good, feels so good hugging seokjin tightly to him, like this. 

they stay like that for a moment, namjoon only slightly awkwardly petting at seokjin’s hair, wrapped around one another every way they can be and seokjin would stay here forever, would follow namjoon into his room and climb into his bed and big spoon the life out of his gentle baby giant if he didn’t have other equally as important things to accomplish, right now. 

“thank you, joon-ah,” seokjin says, slowly and gently extracting himself from namjoon’s hold. 

“sure, of course,” namjoon says, swaying forward on his feet to press his mouth to seokjin’s. “goodnight hyung. sleep well. i love you.” 

“i love you, too,” seokjin tells him, trails his fingertips down the side of namjoon’s neck just to touch him one more time and then he gently pushes namjoon back into his room, closes the door and sets off once more. 

_/_/_/_/

the door to hoseok’s room is open already, when seokjin arrives in front of it. 

hoseok is lying on his bed on his stomach, his tongue between his teeth and his phone held in front of him in both hands. 

he looks up in surprise when seokjin knocks lightly on the door frame. 

“hyung. why aren’t you with taehyung?” he asks, dropping his phone onto his sheets and sitting up straight. 

he reaches out for seokjin when he walks towards his bed. 

“i am. i’m going back to him, i mean. just wanted to say goodnight to you,” seokjin tells him, settling easily into hoseok’s lap when he pulls him down to sit there. 

“did you have a good time? how did our little beelzebub treat you?” hoseok asks, wrapping his arms around seokjin’s middle and rocking him a little from side to side. 

“pretty good,” seokjin says mildly. “he fucked me into subspace. i’m still kinda floaty, honestly.” 

hoseok stills underneath him. and then he carefully lifts and slightly twists seokjin’s body in his lap, gets him tipped sideways so he can cradle him like that and look at him. 

“damn, hyung. i mean, i knew firsthand that the dick was good, but fuck.” 

“actually, i fucked him,” seokjin says and hoseok’s eyes go so wide it makes seokjin laugh. 

“you fucked him and he still managed to get you to subspace? holy shit. he really drops it like it’s hot, huh?” 

seokjin doesn’t know why hoseok is surprised. literally nothing about taehyung shocks seokjin anymore. 

“it’s taehyung,” seokjin says because honestly that is more than explanation enough in and of itself. 

“true, hyung,” hoseok agrees and then they’re both silent for a moment, seokjin sitting in comfortable, companionable silence while hoseok seems to process what seokjin has just told him, his face alternating between a very entertaining squinty kind of look and a really sweet, glazed over expression of pure awe, it looks like. 

“okay,” seokjin says when he’s ready to move on. “i just wanted to say goodnight. sleep well, hobi-ah,” he says, leaning down to kiss hoseok on the forehead and then laughing at him but acquiescing when he purses his lips up into a pout and gives seokjin puppy eyes. it’s really nice, sitting in hoseok’s lap and kissing him slowly, totally unhurriedly. it’s the opposite of how it had been the last time they’d touched one another, so it feels like they’ve come full circle for today. 

“night, hyung. love you,” hoseok says, rolling over and reaching for his phone again when seokjin gets up to leave. 

he leaves the door to hoseok’s room open like he’d found it, looks back at hoseok once more and smiles to himself just at the sight of him before he turns and pads away, onwards to his next destination. 

_/_/_/_/

when seokjin arrives in front of yoongi’s bedroom door, he pauses to take a breath before he lifts his hand to knock. 

he wants to see yoongi just as much as he wants to see the rest of them, that’s not the problem. he maybe might want to see yoongi even a little bit more, is the thing. 

yoongi had been the first one of them that seokjin had fallen in love with. yoongi was how and why and where this all began, for seokjin, though yoongi himself doesn’t know that. no one does. 

it’s not like it had been hard, to fall in love with him. seokjin hadn’t done it on purpose; certainly hadn’t set out to fall for someone in his group or even anyone at all. but he’d loved yoongi from the very beginning, felt both fiercely protective of and protected by him pretty quickly after they’d met. everything was accelerated in the beginning, all of them going from being total strangers to living in one another’s pockets twenty four hours a day and sharing the kind of hardships that can’t do anything but foster the deepest, most intangible bonds between the people who survive them together. they’d fought hard for each other, spent whole years fighting tooth and nail to get to stay together, it had felt like, and then yoongi and seokjin had gotten to share a room, just the two of them. 

it took a week, for seokjin to fall in love with him, after that. 

they’d both still had their clothes in vaguely organized piles stacked up against the walls, all of their things sorted neatly but not put away because their furniture hadn’t come yet and they had nowhere to put anything. their beds were all that was properly set up, but pushed into the middle of the room for now, for need of wall space to stack things. 

seokjin had come home from a vocal lesson to find yoongi passed out on his bed, but with his arm stretched out and his hand lax in the sheets on seokjin’s bed like he’d been reaching for something in his sleep and seokjin had looked at his tired, pale face and fallen in love with him there and then. 

nothing had changed, after that. everything was different, but not in ways that showed. 

and the next time it happened (hoseok), seokjin had recognized it instantly. 

the time after that (namjoon), he saw it coming a mile off. 

it was kind of just the logical conclusion of things when the three littlest maknaes snuck up on him, crept up behind him and wormed their way close with their trojan horse hugs, their guerrilla warfare affections. you can’t love one of them without loving the other two as well because so much of who they are is shared, spread out between them all in carefully equal parts. 

seokjin had known he was in love with all of them long before taehyung had launched his certainly demonic campaign to sexually frustrate them all into submission, or whatever version of that they wanted. 

but nothing could or can ever change the fact that yoongi was the beginning, for seokjin. 

so seokjin takes another deep breath and tries to get his heart rate down, back under control before he knocks on yoongi’s bedroom door. 

when he finally does, it’s not yoongi who appears to open it. 

“hyung?” jimin asks and seokjin is pleased to see him, is always pleased to see jimin, but he’s surprised, too. when he looks around jimin, he sees that yoongi is sitting cross legged on the floor, with his back leaning back against the side of his bed. his eyes are red rimmed and he’s obviously been crying. 

seokjin’s first instinct is to go to him. to get to him as quickly as he possibly can and fix whatever hurt him. it’s harder to ignore now, with the way seokjin is already feeling, but he fights it hard. he knows he has to. 

“is he okay?” he asks jimin and jimin doesn’t answer. he looks back at yoongi, instead and then steps out of the way when yoongi nods at him. 

“come in, hyung,” yoongi says, his voice scratchy and his nose sounding blocked. 

seokjin is on his knees in front of him in an instant. 

“what’s wrong? what happened?” he asks and his heart is in his throat when yoongi lifts his watery eyes to meet seokjin’s gaze. 

“i’m okay, hyung, nothing’s wrong. nothing happened,” yoongi says but there has to be something, there has to be more to this and seokjin thinks he begins to figure it out when jimin comes to stand by his side, leans in against seokjin and runs his fingers through seokjin’s hair. 

jimin. 

“i was just being … not dumb, but silly, maybe. i guess,” yoongi says and then he wipes his face off with the sleeve of his shirt and tries to smile for seokjin, mostly succeeds. 

“is this about what happened earlier? with namjoon?” seokjin asks, sure it is. 

“yeah, don’t worry. i apologized to him,” yoongi is quick to reassure seokjin, but that’s hardly his primary concern, here. 

“and … jimin?” seokjin asks carefully, not looking away from yoongi but leaning into jimin’s hand in his hair a little more. 

“i asked if we could talk about it. we figured some stuff out, just before you got here,” yoongi says and then he lifts his eyes to look at jimin, smiles at him in a way that’s different to how he’d smiled at seokjin. 

“oh. am i interrupting? i should go,” seokjin says, awkwardly starting to climb to his feet, but yoongi scrambles up off the floor with him and then darts in to hug him before he can turn to leave. 

“no, don’t go, hyung. please,” yoongi says and everything about this interaction has become abruptly strange, but not in a way that’s anything other than good, as far as seokjin can tell, so he wraps an arm up around yoongi’s shoulders and then reaches back until he can get a hold of jimin’s hand. when their hands lock, jimin appears at yoongi and seokjin’s side, curls his free arm around yoongi’s waist and rests his head in on seokjin’s shoulder. 

they stay together like that, no one saying anything, no one needing to. 

and when yoongi takes a deep and shuddering breath and steps back, his face looks a hundred times better than it had when seokjin had walked in. 

“why are you here, though?” he asks, head tilting as he thinks about it. “aren’t you spending tonight with taehyung?” 

“yeah i did, i am,” seokjin tells him and can’t help but notice how jimin’s hand briefly tenses in his. “he’s in my bed, i’m going back there now, but -” 

he looks at jimin. looks at yoongi, then. 

“do you wanna come? do one or both of you need him right now? because i don’t mind sharing.” 

obviously, whatever kind of conversation they just had, it hadn’t been easy for either of them. for yoongi to acknowledge something like jealousy in this situation must have been incredibly difficult for him, however he went about it and jimin is rigid at seokjin’s side. so while seokjin for sure needs taehyung right now, that doesn’t mean that they don’t need him, too. 

yoongi looks at jimin, who shakes his head and looks right back at him. 

“i think we’re good here, hyung. but thank you for thinking of us,” yoongi says and then he sits down on his bed, seems almost to bow under the weight of whatever he’s worked through tonight. 

jimin is still at seokjin’s side. still tense where he stands. 

“jimin-ah,” seokjin says and it’s not really surprising at this point, that they know each other well enough for just the utterance of one another’s names to get a question, a sentiment across. 

“i’m fine, i’m not like -” jimin starts, but trails off. he brushes his hair back off his face and sighs heavily, his cheeks rounding adorably with it. “it’s just that i’m next, now. i’m last. and that’s a lot, hyung.” 

that’s fair. that’s true and seokjin’s pretty sure they’re all aware that jimin and taehyung are the last part of this for a very important reason. for a whole lot of very important reasons. it’s not surprising that jimin would be nervous. 

“hey,” seokjin says, turning towards him and lifting his chin until jimin looks at him. “it’s gonna be fine. it’s going to be exactly what you and him want it to be. it’s normal to be nervous, but it’s taehyung. it’s just taehyung.” 

yoongi makes a quiet scoffing sound at that, but jimin nods. 

“i know, hyung. you’re right. i’m excited just as much as i’m nervous.” he musters up a smile for seokjin and it’s a subdued still, almost strained but no less bright; still looks perfectly right on jimin’s face, just closer to the exhausted-after-practice jimin than the well-rested-and-sunny jimin than seokjin would prefer. but that’s okay. things are changing and they’re changing fast. they’re all reeling a little, still. 

“and so you should be,” yoongi says, his mouth doing that adorable kitten pout that it does when he’s trying not to smile. “right, hyung? you still haven’t told us why you’re here, i can’t help but notice.” 

“oh, right,” seokjin says, because at the sight of yoongi’s teary face all other thoughts had left his head. “i just came to say goodnight. i wanted to say goodnight to you.” 

“okay, well - goodnight hyung,” yoongi says, one side of his mouth lifting into a smile. the soft one he only ever shows to seokjin when they’re alone, together. that he does so now, with jimin there with them, makes seokjin’s heart swell. 

“goodnight, my yoongichi. i love you very much,” seokjin says and this makes an appalled look cross yoongi’s face, followed quickly by something very soft that sends him right back into looking appalled again. 

jimin sniggers a low peal of ‘kekekekeke’ into his own palm and then immediately throws himself at yoongi, starts to poke at his dumples, calling him every cute name under the sun. 

“i love you too, park jimin,” seokjin says and when jimin twists back to look at him his eye-smile is about as deeply crinkled as seokjin has ever seen it. 

“love you, hyuuuuung,” jimin sing-songs as seokjin turns to leave and he can still hear him crooning something low and sweet at yoongi when he closes the door. 

seokjin feels good, leaving the two of them together like this. 

seokjin feels almost perfect, almost wholly happy. 

almost. 

_/_/_/_/

seokjin knocks at jungkook’s door for a long minute and still receives no answer. he’s just about to walk away and head back to taehyung when he hears noise coming from inside jungkook’s room. 

he decides to chance it and opens the door, peeks his head inside. 

the light shining in from the corridor must alert jungkook to his presence, because he spins around in his gaming chair, his headphones still on. 

“hold on, hyung needs me,” he says into his headset and then he spins back to press a clatter of keys on his keyboard before he spins back to seokjin again, his headphones abandoned on his desk now. 

seokjin squints at him. and then he squints at the lights lining the ceiling of his room. and then he squints back at jungkook again. 

“are those … LED strips?” he asks, finally, because he’s pretty sure nothing else could account for the purple glow of jungkook’s room. he’d like to think there was another explanation, really he would, but he can’t hold out much hope. 

“hell yeah. they match my keyboard,” jungkook says, gesturing over his shoulder with one thumb like seokjin hasn’t seen his keyboard a thousand times before. “but you can make ‘em any colour you want. i have an app on my phone. there’s even a timer, so i don’t have to remember to turn them off at night.” 

it feels kind of fitting, honestly. 

when jungkook had finished assembling his gaming set up, seokjin had looked at him and thought to himself ‘damn, i can’t believe i want to sleep with this man.’ 

so it makes perfect sense that standing here, now, what seokjin thinks is: ‘damn, i can’t believe i’m going to sleep with this man.’ 

jungkook has his phone in his hand, seems to be scrolling through his home screens for something, and - 

“see?” he says, triumphantly. they’re bathed in a baby blue glow, now and his smile is genuinely excited. 

seokjin hasn’t got a choice, here. he crosses the room and cups jungkook’s face in both of his hands and kisses him in a way that can only be described as ‘desperate,’ because that’s what he is. he is desperately, wholly in love with this man. 

“okay,” jungkook says when seokjin finally lets him pull away, when they’re both short of breath and seokjin is tingling all over again, feels kind of like he’s floating. “i think they’re pretty cool too, but that’s a kind of extreme reaction, hyung. i hope the other hyungs like them this much, as well.” 

“you’re entirely ridiculous,” seokjin tells him and jungkook scoffs at him immediately. he starts to protest loudly and vehemently, but seokjin keeps speaking over him. “and i love you like that. i love you just like this,” he says. 

“oh,” jungkook says, no longer riled up. seokjin loves him like this, too. “cool. i love you too, hyung. duh.” he’s grinning again, still lit up in soft hues of blue and seokjin leans in to press their foreheads together, kisses him just once more because this is it, this is the feeling he’d come looking for. he feels complete, now. 

“goodnight, jungkook-ah,” seokjin says, ready now to go back to taehyung. 

“‘night, hyung,” jungkook calls after him. 

and then - 

“hey wait, do you wanna see the super cool bruise that namjoon hyung -” 

seokjin stops at the door to laugh. 

“i saw the pictures you spammed the group chat with, already. taehyung showed them to me,” seokjin assures him. “and i’ll get to see it up close tomorrow, right? during the hi-touch event?” 

jungkook’s jaw goes slack for a second, his mouth fallen open. and then he snaps it shut and his eyes take on that recently familiar glaze that seokjin has come to fear. 

seokjin makes for his bedroom, makes for the safety and solace of taehyung at a dead run. 

which, all things considered, is pretty fucking wild. 

_/_/_/_/

“are you … being pursued, hyung?” taehyung asks when he slips into the room out of breath but not having forgotten to grab the bottles of water he’d promised to return with. 

“jungkook,” is all seokjin says, crossing the floor to climb into bed with taehyung when he lifts the covers for him. 

“so yes, you are being pursued. i think that’s kind of a constant state for all of us, now. have i mentioned how proud of him i am?” taehyung says as he twists the lid off the bottle seokjin passes to him. “because holy hell, what a joy that boy is to me.” 

“‘holy hell’ sounds about right,” seokjin says after taking a long swallow from his own bottle. 

they both reach to put their bottles on either bedside table and then they both roll back into the middle of the bed, reaching for each other at the same time. 

“how are you feeling now, hyung?” taehyung asks when he’s got seokjin cuddled up in his arms, his arms around him once again. “did you do what you needed to do?” 

seokjin wriggles down into under the covers more, turns so he can rest his head in on taehyung’s chest. 

“i did exactly what i needed to do,” he tells taehyung, his eyes already starting to slip shut. “and i feel great. kind of invincible, actually.” 

“eyyyy,” taehyung says, “that’s that demon di-” 

seokjin, thankfully, falls sleep before he has to hear the conclusion of that sentence. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/  
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/  
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/


	7. taehyung/jimin - 질렀어

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “are you trying to tell me something?” jimin asked, wondering if his heart was racing because he was scared or for another reason, something else he couldn’t look at directly or spell out even to himself. 
> 
> in his peripheral vision, taehyung’s head tilted comically, even though jimin couldn’t bring himself to turn to face him.
> 
> “i don’t know? am i?” taehyung asked, like he thought jimin was supposed to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first things first it's been eighty four years etc. i'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this chapter but to explain simply - 
> 
> a) the world is on fire  
> b) i am a disaster human  
> c) it's 60k 
> 
> honestly, i have been at war with this chapter and there were times when i was fighting against it and times when it was the only thing keeping me going in my fight against other things entirely. i've been in fandom for twelve or thirteen years now and in this last month i genuinely considered deleting my ao3 account and twitter. i am a different person posting this chapter than i was posting the last and that wasn't always an easy process but i'm happier in the changes i had to make. even if i am exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally and existentially. so if you've ever felt the urge to say something nice to me, i would be very much obliged in these trying and impossible times. 
> 
> this is the vmin chapter, and in a lot of ways it's where this story has been leading since the beginning. it's very precious to me and i hope you like it. there's still another chapter to go, but i think i'm going to take a break from writing this story for a little while now and work on other things, just to re-align my focus and get back in touch with some of the other things i've started to write and would like to keep working on. i don't think you'll feel unsatisfied to wait after the conclusion of this chapter, though. 
> 
> warning for brief mentions of disordered eating and distorted body image struggles. there's also one small instance of homophobia. 
> 
> as usual you can find me on twitter @hwifighting, my fic acc is @mockturtletale and if you'd like to prompt me that would make me very happy, you can hmu @ https://curiouscat.me/mockturtletale
> 
> i hope you're all doing as well as you can be at the moment, and being kind to and patient with yourselves. but i hope you're also challenging yourself to get educated and stay aware about how the racism in the US is part of a much larger picture that affects the whole world and every single one of us. sign petitions, use twitter as the political platform it's always been, donate if you can and talk to the people in your lives about what's happening and what part we play in it / how we can better ourselves and do more to make a difference. 
> 
> ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

jimin doesn’t remember when it started. 

for all that some moments from their earliest days stick out for them like sore thumbs, like since-healed bones that can’t forget what it had felt like to break, so much of that time seemed to simply wash over them, dragging them along like afterthoughts; as if by mistake or by pure accident. 

it doesn’t especially stick out for jimin - falling for them. 

but he remembers the moment when the possibility of it was born in him; sprang to life like it was always meant to be, was from the very beginning set to arrive and jimin had simply forgotten to expect it. 

and that moment, he won’t ever forget. 

_/_/_/

they’d been babies, still. 

even seokjin. 

maybe seokjin most of all, because they’d had him to lean on, his care of them to fall back on, but who did he have? all of them, but no one else - no one who could give him what he gave to them. no one at all he could turn to for help, for guidance, when the cameras were shut off and the stage lights died and the managers went home to their families. 

seokjin was it for them and jimin has been thankful for him every single day of this, but he’d also thought - pretty often - that if he’d been the hyung, he might not have made it. that if he’d been the hyung, _they_ might not have made it. 

when this thought occurs to jimin, not as often now but no less terrifying when it does, he seeks seokjin out immediately; hunts him down to hold him tight. seokjin has long since stopped questioning it, simply accepts it and has even begun to bask in it, welcoming the sight of jimin with whatever look he gets on his face then with open arms and a wide smile. jimin can’t remember when it became a hardship for him, not to kiss seokjin in those moments - in plenty of other moments besides - but that’s where he’s at now. it’s where he’s been for a while. and then some. 

possibility had bloomed long before reality was ready to make room for it. 

when the moment of change had occurred for jimin, it had been so late at night that it was almost morning and it was dark the way it only gets in the depths of winter; the lack of light a heavy, solid thing. they’d been in bunks still, back then; six of them piled into one room and only five beds occupied that night because jimin was in taehyung’s, with him. 

that day had been the first time someone else had said something about it - the way the two of them were with one another. 

another trainee, one whose face jimin won’t ever forget but whose name he doesn’t try to remember had made some throwaway, barbed comment about the two of them - tossed it out into the middle of the room to explode like a grenade in the middle of their only and long, long earned break that day. jimin had been braced for it, had been expecting it every day since they started getting a certain very careful, pointedly considering kind of look from three or four of the people they’d still thought they might spend their whole careers with, back then, but he hadn’t anticipated the way he’d feel about it. 

he’d thought he’d hate it. he’d thought he’d let it make him hate himself. he’d feared, in his weaker moments, that he might even let it make him hate taehyung. 

jimin hadn’t been in great shape, back then. high school and the trainee idol lifestyle had tagged one another into a brutal grudge match against what little self esteem he’d managed to salvage up to that point. they’d teamed up to take him down and they’d quickly and viciously ripped him to shreds; spit him back out as someone he couldn’t recognize, reduced him to bits and pieces, shards and slivers but nothing solid, never sure. no longer anything or anyone he could pin down as being truly _him_. 

the six of them had been the only reason he’d survived it. even when there was more than seven of them, even during that awful week when they’d all thought it might only ever be six of them, they’d been what kept him together. 

jimin had looked at how hard they were fighting, had seen in the exhausted slump of their shoulders, the tear tracks on their faces, in the blood and bruises and pulled muscles and sprained bones, in their broken and still breaking hearts, just how much of themselves they were prepared to give up for this, for _them_. and since, he’s never known what it felt like to think that what was required of him was too much, in comparison. it was do-able, if it was for them. it was his decision and the only choice he’d ever make, when it was for them. 

taehyung had been what held jimin up when nothing and no-one else could. 

taehyung had never expected anything from jimin, never asked him for more, never spoke to him like he wasn’t already giving up everything he had. he’d never treated jimin like he was special, either. he didn’t praise him like the others did: only ever sometimes - when he did something that they couldn’t, or pushed himself to a point that the rest of them wouldn’t. how taehyung spoke to him - how he treated jimin - never changed, never depended on what jimin had or had not or would or could not do. 

it took a while for jimin to put his finger on what it was exactly, that made the way taehyung was with him so different, so wholly alien to jimin. 

when he’d finally put the pieces together, he’d cried until his whole body hurt, his face blotchy and eyes stung bloodshot, his chest heaving under something so much bigger than he was, his knees trembling, his entire frame shaking with it. 

taehyung was able to always no matter what greet jimin with a smile that said he was wholly happy to see him because he was. because he loved jimin regardless of what was going on for them, however he was that day, whoever he’d managed to cobble himself together to be in order to satisfy the company and the fans and his parents and the perfect, venomous version of himself that lived in his own head and berated him day and night. 

when he was none of those things, taehyung still loved him.

when he’d just destroyed a gym session and still had enough energy to push through a twenty hour dance practice, when his abs were perfect and his skin was clear and his voice was strong and his hands were steady, taehyung loved him. and when he was weak with it all, sick and sore and faltering until he couldn’t get out of bed, needed taehyung to hold him up in the shower, needed taehyung to help him sit up just far enough to heave into a bucket, taehyung loved him the very same way. 

because taehyung didn’t want anything from jimin. 

taehyung had no concept of who he needed jimin to be - no ideal for jimin to constantly fail to live up to. 

taehyung simply loved him, always and easily and only because of who he was, not for who he had the potential to become or what he might one day achieve. 

and that was a first, for jimin. 

before taehyung, no one had ever loved jimin without wanting something from him, without asking him to earn it somehow. even his parents had expectations of who he should be and how he should become the person they wanted him to be; hopes on the good days, but regulations, almost law-like on the worse ones. 

taehyung never asked anything of jimin. jimin had no way of knowing whether he was letting taehyung down, whether he was making taehyung proud, because taehyung never told him what he expected from him, not even under the guise of ‘leading jimin toward his potential’, like their trainers did. 

and at first, jimin wondered if that meant that taehyung didn’t think about him at all, didn’t care about him either way. he’d always been nice to jimin, was welcoming to him from day one and had never scaled back those efforts to make jimin feel comfortable, feel like part of this even when he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. 

jimin hadn’t known, then, what love without expectation - without criticism, without sharp reprimands and disappointed sighs and barbed instructions wrapped in soft simpering smiles - _was_. 

so he’d learned it like it was two separate things. 

first, his slow but steady and ever surer realization that taehyung neither needed nor wanted him to be anyone or anything in particular. 

and then, so much slower but no less steadily, jimin had realized that taehyung loved him. 

putting the two of those together had taken him a while. making their combination make sense had taken longer still. 

when nameless, pinched faced failed trainee number thirty one had looked over at jimin and taehyung - passing a bottle of water back and forth between them, sitting cross legged and facing one another over their shared snack - and asked loudly, cruelly, which one of them was bending over for the other, jimin might have thought he’d been braced for it, but he’d frozen up, shocked into total stillness under the choking weight of his horror. 

taehyung had reacted quickly, seemingly without thought; reaching blindly for his still half full can of iced coffee and throwing it with a kind of focus and strength that none of them had seen from him yet, then. it had been a thing of beauty, the way it arced through the air; a sharp, dark spray of liquid tracking it’s progress until the can hit the guy square in his left eye and with so loud a thud that everyone had fallen silent for a second after; maybe in surprise, maybe in fear. 

violence of any kind between the trainees ended only in dismissal, every single time. that didn’t mean they didn’t get into it with one another, shoving and shouting and throwing things, acting out sometimes. but that was kept between them, because none of them wanted to be the reason why someone else lost their chance, none of them were prepared to cost anyone their shot at this. 

nameless asshole trainee, though, had grinned when his eye immediately started to swell up, had poked at the already purpling skin with his gross dirty fingernails like he’d wanted to make it worse. and that was where the fear came into play, because jimin knew he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t bear the thought of losing taehyung; not for this piece of shit, but also not for any reason at all. 

namjoon had been the one to break the silence, after. he’d told rhythmless, rank trainee number sixty six to keep his idiot mouth shut and crossed the room to pull an ice pack out of the freezer they’d had to keep constantly stocked with them in those days, tossed it right at him and said ‘whoops, sorry, you know how clumsy i am,’ when it hit him hard in the chest. 

no one had talked about it after, not even when they’d all watched nauseating, graceless trainee number eighty three slither triumphantly upstairs immediately after practice ended. 

they hadn’t talked about it, either, when jimin came in early the next day and headed straight for the third floor, surprised but also maybe not, to find five other people already filling up the corridor. 

that had been the first time this particular set of them had been established this way. that had been the very first time there was namjoon and seokjin and yoongi and hoseok and jimin and jungkook, united that way and for taehyung. 

they hadn’t talked about it afterwards, not immediately. they’d never spoken about it in front of taehyung. 

[ 

a few years later they’d half talked about it, mostly drunk and emotional about something else, moreso than normal. 

hoseok had cried, talking about how he’d gotten on his knees and cried then, too, begged their managers not to make taehyung leave. 

yoongi had argued, spitting mad but trying to contain it, desperate to make the powers that be see the good business sense in keeping taehyung, because he didn’t think that mattered the most or even at all but he knew it was all they cared about and the only way to get through to them. 

namjoon and seokjin had both tried to take responsibility for taehyung’s actions, both promised to guide him better in the future; namjoon as the group’s leader and seokjin as his hyung even though he was still yet to be the oldest trainee, at the time. 

jimin had offered to leave instead. had offered himself up to save taehyung, because that’s exactly what taehyung had done for him here in the first place. 

jungkook had taken a slightly different tack, telling management that if they fired taehyung he’d quit and join yg and do his damndest to take taehyung and namjoon and whoever else he could convince to come with him, too. 

when he’d told them all that, bashful about it now because seokjin and yoongi had lovingly re-worked his youthful cocky reckless exuberance into a quiet, steady sense of self surety that some days was somehow harder to deal with, seokjin had beamed at him in genuine pride. yoongi had sent him a four page text message a couple days later, ending it with an unprompted declaration of his love. he’d sent something similar to taehyung, though taehyung had never known what prompted it. 

] 

jimin and taehyung hadn’t talked about it, not the day it happened and not since then, either. 

but that very night, jimin hadn’t let himself wrestle with the decision to climb into taehyung’s bed. he hadn’t forced himself to stay awake until he was sure everyone else was asleep before he let himself crawl under taehyung’s sheets and curl up around him, next to him, half on top of him, mostly under him, big enough for taehyung to ball himself into, small enough for taehyung to wrap around. 

it didn’t matter how they fit together, just that they did and that day, jimin had stopped caring what anyone had to say about that because someone finally had and the world hadn’t ended. 

taehyung hadn’t left him, hadn’t pushed him away, hadn’t told jimin that he didn’t like him like that, didn’t love him that much. 

“i can’t make it so that you stop hurting,” taehyung had told him, bright eyed and waiting when jimin brushed his teeth and finished patting in his lotion and walked right past his own bed to get into taehyung’s instead. “but i’ll never let anyone think it’s okay to hurt you.” 

the lights were still on, other trainees still wandering in and out of the room and jimin hadn’t noticed any of them, not a single one, because he’d looked at taehyung and seen nothing and no one else. 

{ if he had registered the other trainees in their space, that night, he’d have noticed something interesting about them. he’d have looked around and seen namjoon there now, having swapped himself in for asshole trainee, who was already sleeping in the room furthest down the hall, now, but only for that one night, only until he was fired the next day. }

{ he’d have noticed seokjin just outside, bartering away the only single room in the dorm and a watch he loved for a bottom bunk in here that he’d hit his head on every morning for months to come. }

{ he’d have noticed that yoongi, famed back then for never unpacking, never getting attached to anywhere, anything or anyone, was quietly sorting his clothes into the wardrobe and yelling at hoseok to return the tape he’d borrowed so yoongi could stick up his posters. }

{{ he had noticed, the next morning, that he had to step over jungkook to get to the bathroom, because sometime in the night he must have rolled off yoongi’s bed down onto the floor between the bunks and just stayed there. there were more than seven of them, back then, but there was seven of them in that room that night and for a lot of nights after it. the fact that it was the same seven who made it was not for one second a coincidence. }}

and that had been the moment when the two things jimin had known about how taehyung felt about him became one very important thing. 

he wasn’t waiting for taehyung to finally - at some point, when it mattered or when it suited him - show jimin what he needed to do to earn taehyung’s love, to be worthy of it. and the absence of those qualifiers in no way minimized jimin’s importance to taehyung, or the breadth of his feelings for him. 

jimin didn’t have to wait for anything. and he didn’t have to do anything, either. he didn’t even have to live in constant, vague fear of doing something that would make taehyung love him less. 

because taehyung loved _him_. 

he didn’t love what jimin could do or might be, he didn’t love jimin _if_ or _when_ or _for_. 

and that wasn’t changing anytime soon. 

that wasn’t something jimin could lose in one fell swoop, all at once, all gone in an instant. 

because taehyung loved him and that was it. 

to jimin, it feels like everything began and still begins with taehyung; even he himself, in some ways; in the best ways. 

taehyung had been the first person to love jimin like that, but he hadn’t been the last. 

taehyung had been why this incarnation of them (the seven of them, together) had come to be. 

taehyung is as bright and inevitable as sunrise, to jimin. 

taehyung was and is the dawn, for jimin. 

and when he looks at him, when he thinks of him, with his hand in jimin’s, sunset seems a long way off. 

so the beginning of all of this had happened like that, for jimin. it wasn’t an onslaught of feelings or a big bang moment of sudden and absolute realization. it was the slow and finally perfect, clear and crystallized understanding that he was loved. beloved, in a way he’d never felt or been before.

and it was in relief, with gratitude, that jimin had wept that night. totally and completely comfortable for once in his life, in taehyung’s arms; bare-boned in taehyung’s bed because here he didn’t need to dress himself up, here he did not need to hide. 

and so this started with taehyung in more ways than one, for jimin. 

but the beginning of it - the root of it, for him - was himself, because having taehyung love him without conditions, without measure, without strings or ties or binding, had meant learning to love himself that way too. 

this part of it that they’re figuring out now isn’t complicated for jimin. not the physical aspect of it, at least. figuring out how to love himself had also taught him a lot about what he loved period and of course he’d most instantly, most easily applied that same lens to the people he found himself surrounded by most often, the people he wanted to be with, always. 

jimin fell in love with the rest of them inevitably, but gradually nonetheless. every day he found something else to admire about one of them, some side to them that made him feel sometimes like this was more than simply inevitable, like whatever ‘this’ was, it existed before even they did. 

falling in love with all of them had felt like pieces falling into place, every added one only ever making the sum of it all clearer, making it make more sense as time went on. 

taehyung hadn’t been the first one of them that he’d found himself in love with, but it was only because of how taehyung loved him - how taehyung had taught him to love - that jimin could ever feel that way at all. 

he’d known, after the first one, that the others would follow. he didn’t know the order and couldn’t know the timing, but he’d known it like he’d never known anything else before or since. 

knowing and doing, however, are not the same thing. 

the prospect of it as something they’re all ready to acknowledge and enter into now, even together, shakes jimin to his foundations and they all see that. they’re all there to watch him wobble. their being at his side is what steadies him so that standing still now, frozen into inaction again, if only for a moment, he finds himself closer to them than he’d been before, now that he has the time and occasion to look around and note his surroundings, at last. 

it’s scary, still. 

just because jimin knows how to love better doesn’t mean he has unlearned how to fear. 

but yoongi holds his hand through the aftershocks of it and that helps. 

and then namjoon is there to bolster him and that helps, too. 

seokjin is there, standing in the kitchen with his arms around jimin’s waist and his smiling mouth pressed to jimin’s and that makes jimin feel like his foundations are set again, set anew so that now he is ready to build. 

what follows this is going to be more. 

what comes now will be so much more than there was before and the magnitude of it still makes jimin tremble in its huge and looming shadow, but he’s about to step out into the light, set off up into the sprawling mass of it, hand in hand with six people that he loves and trusts with his life, with everything he has and all that he wants. 

it’s the end of a long, long wait. 

it’s the beginning of their forever. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

this phase of their forever starts with taehyung texting jimin some pictures of hoseok and namjoon making out on their living room couch. 

the creeper shots come courtesy of jeon jungkook, jimin finds out, when that’s all he asks in response to taehyung sending these to him. 

they’d had something like a fight earlier on that afternoon, but only the strange and very fraught kind of fights they have often these days; taehyung doing or saying something particularly unbearable and jimin blowing up at him out of a frustration that taehyung simply doesn’t understand. 

“you asked for this. you text me, wanting to borrow this and i’d just gotten out of the shower, what did you want me to do?” taehyung protests, confused, when jimin yells at him for walking into his bedroom unannounced and completely naked. 

“i didn’t say i needed it right now, i didn’t say ‘hey come hand deliver it immediately wearing absolutely fucking nothing’,” jimin is livid. he takes the serum from taehyung’s hand and then pushes at his bare shoulder with a single fingertip, not trusting himself to lay a whole hand on his naked and still shower dewy skin. “what the fuck is wrong with you?” 

jimin swears a lot around taehyung, these days. 

taehyung only continues to look bewildered, which angers jimin more. 

“get out already, go put some fucking clothes on, jesus christ,” jimin says, despairing and when he reaches out he does so to turn taehyung by his shoulders and push him in the direction of the door, so it’s entirely unacceptable when taehyung steps in under his outstretched arm and tries to hug jimin, instead. 

“what are you so mad for,” taehyung wants to know and his confusion coupled with jimin’s swearing has him pouting now, right there in jimin’s face and nope, no, definitely not. it’s too much. it’s too soon and it’s so much and taehyung not understanding that makes it so much harder, because pushing him away already kills jimin, but doing it when taehyung looks so lost makes him feel like absolute shit. he never wants to hurt taehyung but the alternative would do so much more damage and jimin doesn’t have much hate left in him, these days, but what little he does have might be reserved exclusively for these moments. 

“you know what? if you won’t leave, then i will,” jimin says and then he flees his own bedroom, flees from taehyung who tries to follow him through the house, still stark fucking naked. 

he goes out without his coat, with just his phone because he left his wallet on the table in his room and it doesn’t even matter because there’s nowhere for him to go, anyway. 

he walks around the apartment complex a few times and then a couple more times, just for good measure. 

( just to give it enough time that taehyung will have to be clothed by the time he goes back. ) 

and when he gets home, the whole apartment is quiet, taehyung nowhere to be seen and no one else loitering around the place, either.

jimin is looking forward to a quiet, peaceful evening for once. 

and then taehyung messages him a blank body of text with three pictures attached. and jimin doesn’t want to open them, he really and truly does not want to see whatever it is that taehyung wants to show him, but eventually (read: six minutes later) curiosity gets the better of him and he is genuinely shook to find that the pictures aren’t even of taehyung, but of namjoon and hoseok instead. namjoon and hoseok wrapped around one another on their living room couch, their bodies touching in a lot of places all at once, the fit of their lips setting something in jimin on fire.

tae💕  
  
[ image attached ]  
  
[ image attached ]  
  
[ image attached ]  
  
......... who took these?  
  


taehyung, of course, responds instantly.

jungkook, obviously  
  


which … fair.

when  
  


jimin is short with taehyung, because he’s still mad. he’s mad at taehyung for acting like nothing happened; like they hadn’t almost had a fight last time they’d spoken. he’s mad at taehyung for being so attractive. he’s mad at himself for being mad about it.

but none of that means he’s not interested in whatever’s going on with namjoon and hoseok.

earlier today. after you yelled at me and left me  
  


that makes jimin want to throw up. that makes jimin feel even more sure that he’s fucking this up, that he’ll only ever be able to fuck this up, because the last thing jimin will ever do is leave taehyung. he walks away from him a lot these days, but he doesn’t know how to show or tell taehyung that he only does that because he refuses to leave him; because he won’t let himself fuck this up so spectacularly that they lose one another for good, forever.

it wasn’t about you  
  


and that’s both true and not, but jimin tosses it like a blanket meant to smother fire; a way to end this line of conversation before it blows up into something potentially catastrophic but without having to explain himself or the origins of it, because he doesn’t know how to. not without making it all worse.

can i come talk to you? not about earlier  
  


is taehyung’s response and it makes jimin pause. they have a tried and tested system of dealing with these pointless arguments, these senseless moments of jimin’s frustrations boiling over when taehyung steps right on his landmines, sometimes decides to jump up and down on them. they give each other space. they cool off alone and then they talk it out and it’s done. until the next time.

for taehyung to ask to speak to him already and not even about their argument means whatever he wants to talk about is serious.

of course. come  
  


the knock on the door comes almost as soon as he’s sent it and that makes jimin smile, despite all of this. despite himself.

that smile vanishes when taehyung pushes the door open and lifts his head to look at jimin. 

“what is it?” jimin says instantly, because taehyung’s face is drawn, his mouth a flattened line. his eyes have the set of an apology about them and that scares jimin, because taehyung isn’t here to talk about their dumb argument and he doesn’t look like this when they talk about those. this is something else. jimin’s heart pounds in his chest, his tongue beating a frantic pulse between his teeth. “tae. what’s wrong?” 

taehyung doesn’t say anything as he crosses the room to sit next to jimin on his bed and that only makes jimin’s heart pound faster, harder. he grabs blindly for taehyung’s hand because he can’t look away from him, he can’t take his eyes off taehyung’s face.

“it’s not -” taehyung starts and then bites his own words off, bites at his bottom lip like he’s trying to keep something in. “nothing’s wrong. it’s nothing bad. i don’t think.” this last part is quieter, slow. an afterthought. he still says it like he’s sorry for something. jimin’s heart does not slow. 

“it’s the hyungs. joon hyung and hobi hyung,” he looks at jimin after he says this and jimin doesn’t know whether it’s that or what he’s just said that unlocks the breath that had been bottling in his chest. 

“what about them?” jimin asks, because this, they can talk about. this is so much easier to talk about than _them_ even though at the heart of it, they’re not separate things. not at all. 

“well. you saw, right?” taehyung pauses, takes a breath. “they kissed. i’m pretty sure that was their first kiss. the first time any of us have kissed.” something about the way he says it, how he phrases that, takes jimin’s breath away entirely. “and i -” taehyung stops dead. takes a huge breath now but then seems to just hold it. waiting. 

this is a fork in their path, and taehyung is either not ready or not willing to make a choice. he is unprepared, perhaps, to go either way alone. 

“you want to kiss them, too,” jimin finishes for him and taehyung breathes out in one long rush. 

“yeah,” taehyung says. “yes. i do.” 

that’s why he’d walked in here looking like he’d done something wrong. walking like he was on his way to the gallows. 

“you thought i’d be mad about that? upset by it?” jimin asks and taehyung’s eyebrows furrow. 

taehyung lifts his legs up onto the bed, tucks his knees up under his chin and gazes at jimin steadily. 

and jimin looks right back at him. 

this is a moment, he knows. 

this is the moment. 

it’s so much less terrifying than he’d thought it would be - than he’d made himself believe it had to be. it’s huge and there’s no denying that, there’s no doubting the way every hair on jimin’s body is standing up, his heart rattling in his chest like it’s banging on the bars of his ribs to be let out, to be set free. 

but it doesn’t feel like a leap. 

jimin doesn’t find himself wondering if he can make it to other side of it, now that it is here. because now that it has arrived like this; brought to him by taehyung - highlighted like a sentence in a book that taehyung has asked jimin to explain to him - it seems simply like another step. just one more that follows easily after all those that have come before; after all the small steps that they have taken together just like they can now do with this one, too. 

reaching for taehyung’s hand, jimin lifts his foot. 

“you know i’m in love with you, right?” jimin starts with, because that’s the easy part. 

taehyung smiles at him, anyway, the corners of his eyes crinkling cutely with it. 

“yeah,” taehyung says, kind of smug, almost cheeky about it. “i know that.” 

“and?” jimin prompts, feeling his eyebrows going high on his forehead because come on. come the fuck on. 

taehyung looks at him, blank faced and jimin can’t figure out if he’s fucking with him or not. he’d better be fucking with him. 

“and you …?” jimin can’t believe he has to say this. he genuinely can’t believe he has to coax this out of taehyung, considering how absolutely blatant he’s always been about every aspect of this besides putting this it into words, apparently. 

taehyung gasps, jolting a little, next to jimin. 

“oh!” he says and then laughs. at himself, it seems. “i’m in love with you, too. come on, jimin-ah. of course i am. have i ever pretended not to be?” he readjusts their hands, gets their fingers laced together. “i’ve always been in love with you. everybody knows that.” 

jimin doesn’t know how true that is, but it’s sweet that taehyung seems so sure that it’s the case. he wonders, if it is true, how that might have affected the rest of them and their feelings on this - the all of them of it all. 

“do you think us being the way we are makes the others think they can’t have us? that we only want one another?” jimin asks as soon as the thought occurs to him, because he doesn’t know any other way to be, when he’s thinking and taehyung is close. they share everything. everything. 

maybe he’s getting ahead of himself, or skipping some necessary parts of this process, because taehyung looks at him like jimin just announced his intent to join the hyung line. 

“well, namjoon hyung asked me if we were together,” taehyung begins and that’s very interesting to jimin. it’s really very interesting to him that namjoon had asked if taehyung and jimin were a couple before he decided to make out with hoseok on the living room couch in broad daylight. “so at least some of them think we are. or thought we were. i’m not sure where they all stand on it now.” taehyung hums a little. “i’m not sure that i’m sure where i stand on it, either,” he says, looking at jimin a little helplessly, almost apologetic again. 

and maybe it’s jimin’s turn to be almost smug, now. to get coaxed. 

he tilts his head and looks at taehyung, pointedly wide eyed. 

“what exactly aren’t you sure about, tae?” 

taehyung, to jimin’s delight and slight surprise, looks flustered. unsure. that’s a rare sight and increasingly so in recent years. jimin finds that he likes knowing that he can still keep taehyung on his toes. mostly, he’s just glad that someone can. 

“well,” taehyung begins, visibly steeling himself, “i know that i’m in love with you and you’re in love with me. i know that we’re not together.” 

it’s so stupid, now that jimin hears it laid out that way. it would be utterly and absolutely senseless, if it wasn’t for how this isn’t only about the two of them and never really was or could have been. 

“but i don’t know if that’s going to change? i don’t know if you want it to,” taehyung concludes, almost frowning but mostly in concentration, it seems like. he’s not pouting or biting at the inside of his mouth so jimin knows he isn’t really unhappy, at least. 

“and what if i don’t want it to?” jimin asks out of both masochism and that small streak of twisted amusement that surfaces in him sometimes. 

taehyung doesn’t seem surprised. his frown doesn’t deepen but it doesn’t lift, either. 

“then we’d continue the way we are. i want what you want. i want you however you want me to have you.” 

that’s both very sweet and kind of unfairly hot, honestly. it works, because that combination describes taehyung perfectly. 

“but that’s not it, is it? this doesn’t end with you and me, does it?” jimin prompts and this is what finally makes taehyung’s frown dissipate. he sucks in his cheeks and bites down on the insides of them, his patented nervous expression. 

“not for me. how about you?” taehyung asks, like he’s asking if jimin wants a bite of his food, instead of if he too wants to bang their entire group. 

“i definitely wanna fuck hobi, but the rest of you don’t really do it for me that way, sorry,” jimin says, just to see taehyung’s jaw drop. the look of total shock on his face is comical, honestly, and jimin thoroughly enjoys it, kind of wants to laugh even though he can’t bear to drag it out longer than a few seconds. “kidding. i’m kidding, taehyung.” he says quickly and then really does laugh when taehyung puts a hand to his chest and gasps like he’s winded. 

jimin lets taehyung process for a second, lifts an arm to rub the palm of his hand up over the line of his spine and then back down, keeps repeating this process until taehyung speaks again. 

“so you … do want us? like that? even me?” he eventually asks and jimin kind of wants to slide right off the bed into a puddle on the floor. he can’t believe he has to try and put this into words. he truly can’t believe that’s even necessary. 

he can’t believe that he’s trembling, a little, at finally saying it out loud. 

“especially you,” he says, just to see taehyung smile, just so he gets to see the crest of his grin sweep up into the delighted curve of his eyes. 

taehyung’s hand pulls away from jimin’s but only so he can slide it up over jimin’s wrist, up along the length of his forearm to cup his elbow. to pull him closer. 

“so it’s - is it …” it’s bizarre, seeing taehyung stutter like this. the biggest way he’s changed in recent years has been his surety; his ever more absolute presence of self. he’s not quite as outgoing as he used to be when they were rookies, has since become insular in a way that still makes jimin’s heart hurt sometimes because it was a change born as a defensive measure; done to protect himself and necessary for that. but though his social circle is smaller now, he’s surer within it and within himself. hearing him second guess himself, his eyes darting widely, wildly, unsure, almost makes jimin feel nostalgic, like this is baby tae he’s sitting with, not the fully grown, adult taehyung who lives to makes jimin’s every waking moment a challenge that he frequently feels like he fails. 

taehyung seems to force himself to meet jimin’s eyes. 

“is it okay? can we do this, now? all of us?” 

jimin doesn’t think, when he reaches out to cup taehyung’s chin in his hand. taehyung doesn’t seem to think either, just twists his whole body to face jimin, to lean closer to him, on his knees on the bed now, sitting back on his heels and patiently staying still for jimin to touch him. their frames have always been much better at understanding and responding to one another than their brains have allowed their tongues to be.

“why are you asking me?” jimin asks, though he already knows the answer. 

“because if you don’t want to, i won’t,” taehyung says in a low voice, as close to a whisper as he can get. “because if it’s not with you, i don’t think it would work. if it’s not with you, i don’t think i want it.” 

jimin brushes the pad of his thumb up under taehyung’s mouth but is careful not to touch his lips. not yet. 

“that’s kind of a lot of power to give me,” he muses, something dark buried deep, deep within him preening when taehyung’s only response is to tilt his chin higher in jimin’s hand. taehyung bares his throat for him and jimin gets whiplash from this; from how taehyung can swing in moments, in seconds, from having jimin on his knees to leashing himself, for jimin. 

now, taehyung doesn’t falter. does not waver. 

“that’s just how it is, for me,” he says plainly and jimin realizes, with a wave of something that should take him by surprise but doesn’t, that this was all he needed, all this time. it doesn’t make him any less terrified, it doesn’t make him all of a sudden convinced that everything’s going to be fine, but it stops being a question of ‘if’, in that moment. 

because with taehyung in it with him, by his side and gripping his hand, there’s no longer any question of ‘if’ they do this. not for jimin. 

“how do you want to do this?” jimin asks, cutting right to the heart of it because there’s nothing to hide now, not anymore. there are things he still needs to figure out for himself, complications specific to him and him alone that he still must detangle, but it helps already, no longer hiding from taehyung. not letting himself run from this, anymore. 

“how do you think this is gonna go?” he asks taehyung, because this is what taehyung came here to talk about. and where they go from here, they’ll go together. 

taehyung tips forward until he’s balancing up on his knees and then he keeps on going, falls until jimin catches him with his arms around taehyung’s shoulders, their chests pressed together and taehyung’s smile bringing the same expression to jimin’s face before he’s even aware of it. 

for now, they can only speculate. 

“are you sure?” taehyung asks one last time before he goes, standing between jimin’s bedroom door and the hallway beyond. “you’re really sure?” 

“i’m certain,” jimin assures him and it’s true. he is absolutely certain, about this. “this is how it was always meant to happen,” he says, because he can’t imagine it any other way. 

“i love you,” taehyung says, not really a reasonable response to what jimin has said, but all that needs to be said, nonetheless. 

“i love you, too,” jimin tells him, automatically, easily. 

that’s always been true, but it’s more than just that, jimin thinks, having said it out loud at last. 

it’s not passive anymore, not just true, not ever said this way. 

no longer just a noun, but used at last; exercised as a verb - a vehicle of intent - 

this love can be their beginning, now.

they walk in it together, from here. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

taehyung has never been subtle. 

and it’s probably the one trait that they differ significantly on, straddling opposite ends of a spectrum for this and this alone. 

jimin spent a lot of his life being built of secrets. full to bursting with insecurities, with the ghosts of mistakes he’d made and could not forget, with the lies he tried to tell himself but could never quite believe. 

that’s not true of him anymore, but the one thing he’d taken forward from that had been the art of nuance. 

it serves him well. 

it remains all but a total mystery to taehyung. 

when they were eighteen and gleefully looking through the ridiculous porn namjoon downloaded onto the group’s shared (read: only) computer, jimin’s first thought had been that it was weird, how he almost kept forgetting that there was a female participant in this performance, so drawn was his focus to her male counterpart. it struck him as something else to hide, a new discovery to keep buried. 

taehyung, leaning over his shoulder with jajangmyeon sauce from their one hot meal today still smeared around his mouth, had said - “this would be so much cooler if it was two guys instead. see if he downloaded anything with just guys.” 

because it was just that simple to him, apparently. and he thought, it seemed, that it was that simple for the rest of them, too. 

“uh, is that - are you trying to tell me something?” jimin had asked, wondering if his heart was racing because he was scared or for another reason, something else he couldn’t look at directly or spell out even to himself. 

in his peripheral vision, taehyung’s head tilted comically, even though jimin couldn’t bring himself to turn to face him, kept his eyes fixed forward on the illegal porn they were watching together instead, because that was the safer option here. 

“i don’t know? am i?” taehyung asked, like he thought jimin was supposed to know. “when i think about this stuff,” he’d gestured vaguely at where the woman was bossily sitting on the man’s face now, because namjoon was still namjoon, when all was said and done, “i think about you. is that - does that make me gay? am i coming out right now?” 

and jimin had had to turn to look at him at him then, incredulous. 

“i have no idea what that makes you,” he’d said, shocked into honesty, because everything about this conversation was rubbing him in several directions at once, some of them uncomfortable and confusing and some of them - the worst of them - not uncomfortable or confusing at all. 

“cool. me neither,” taehyung had seemed content to conclude and that’s the last they’d spoken of it, that day. 

jimin went on with his life, repressing like a boss and taehyung had continued to just do what felt right and say what was true. 

eventually, they’d met in the middle on that one; taehyung learning over time to say less sometimes, more at others, but knowing the difference and getting comfortable with it, knowing instinctively now what level of exposition a moment called for. jimin had to learn to open up more, taking terrifying baby steps towards trusting himself and trusting the rest of them with who he was, as he figured that out. 

taehyung helped with that. 

he also never got any more subtle, though. he didn’t say as much or he said however more he taught himself to recognize as necessary, but he never learned how to say anything carefully or delicately or mildly. 

taehyung has changed, he has questioned and learned and filled out before them, grown up into himself, beside them. 

he never deemed it necessary to teach himself how to be subtle. 

jimin is proud of him for that, as much as he’s terrified of and terrorized by the results of it. 

subtlety simply isn’t for taehyung. 

but taehyung is for jimin, so he loves him as is. he loves him exactly as he is. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ 

when taehyung comes to find jimin and tells him with half lidded, sleepily pleased but still bashful eyes that he fucked hoseok yesterday, jimin isn’t surprised. 

taehyung seems to expect him to be. 

“i know you said i could, but i didn’t think it would be that easy. i didn’t think it would happen so fast,” he says in a rush when jimin only shrugs and nods approvingly at his news. “why aren’t you more shocked by this? i think i’m shocked by this.” 

jimin laughs at him and lifts the covers so taehyung can slide in beside him, rolls his eyes when he slides under jimin’s arm, too, all but plasters himself to jimin’s side. 

“you really thought you’d - what? go and talk to hoseok hyung about kissing namjoon, tell him that you wanted to kiss him too and just walk away from that, unscathed?” jimin knew as soon as taehyung told him he wanted to open this dialogue between them all that it was probably going to be a conversation that taehyung’s dick would have to take lead on. 

they’d agreed that whatever taehyung wanted to do, jimin supported and encouraged, even if he wasn’t quite ready to be an active participant in it himself, yet. 

jimin thinks they’re better off letting taehyung’s dick handle these negotiations alone, if taehyung’s thought process had honestly bet on any of them being able to talk to taehyung about this without jumping him. most of the time, jimin is amazed they manage to get out of bed and go about their lives without jumping him. he knows first hand how hard it is. 

taehyung huffs, a soft exhalation of sensation and sound against jimin’s bare neck. he smells like hoseok’s shampoo and jimin closes his eyes and turns his face into taehyung’s hair. 

“i thought we’d maybe kiss? roll around a little? is this too much? did i go too fast?” taehyung frets out loud and jimin sighs, tugging him closer. 

“who instigated it? you or him?” what a waste of time and breath, honestly, jimin thinks even as he’s asking it. 

“well. hyung did. huh,” taehyung says, contemplation clear in his voice as he muses aloud, sounding awed almost and yeah, it’s definitely for the best that they let his body lead on this one. fitting, too, since his body is what mostly got them into this mess in the first place. it’s only right that that’s what leads them through it to the other side. 

“so all you did was give hyung what he wanted, what he asked for, hmm?” jimin soothes him, his hand trailing up and down taehyung’s arm, his fingers stealing up under the sleeve of his oversized shirt to get at the soft, warm skin of his back. “what a kind and giving dongsaeng you are,” he murmurs, just to feel taehyung shiver in his arms. 

“did i do good?” taehyung asks and jimin feels him lift his head from where it’s tucked into jimin’s shoulder, knows without opening his eyes that taehyung is looking up into his face for confirmation. for something else, as well. 

“you did really good. so good for me. for us,” jimin tells him, swallowing against a lump in his throat and putting his lips to taehyung’s forehead for safekeeping. to mark his place. for later. 

taehyung hums, contentment loud in the sound and jimin smiles against his hair. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

in an unexpected turn of events, jimin ended up coming out to the group before taehyung did. 

well, they kind of did it at the same time, which in itself is the very opposite of unexpected, but the point is - jimin wasn’t far behind taehyung on this. not at all. and he’d always been playing catch up with taehyung, back then. but he’d always been closing the distance between them, even when he lagged behind. 

“ah, i’m not just attracted to women,” he’d admitted, out loud, his heart pounding in his ears, during celebratory drinks in the dorm. he couldn’t remember what they’d been celebrating, but he remembers what every single one of them had been wearing and how none of them had looked away, when he’d met their eyes in turn. 

namjoon had been waxing poetic about a girl group member who he was certain he’d made meaningful eye contact with earlier that day (he hadn’t) and the rest of them were giving their two cents on their respective tastes in women (they largely did not have them). the conversation was tense and careful, had started to feel vaguely like they were in an interview, like there were cameras and microphones trained on them and jimin always fought to keep that feeling from here, in their home. he’d had to wrestle against instincts that were weakening at last, but still chose heightened moments like this to try and reclaim their grip on him, to turn the tide of the conversation. 

“i’m attracted to. uh. men. too. and other kinds of people. all the kinds, really.” the next time he said it, he wouldn’t falter. but then, the words rose in his throat like bile he’d had to fight to not swallow the sharp swell of. 

jungkook had reached across yoongi to clink the necks of their beer bottles together, his non-alcoholic. the bottle, at least. seokjin had poured the original contents of it down the sink and quickly replaced it with real beer when namjoon had gone to the bathroom, all the while whispering loudly about how he only had a few months left to be a bad influence and was going to make the very most of them. 

jungkook had been hitting the gym hard, almost like he meant to make up for how jimin didn’t push himself to go so much anymore, so a beer or two wouldn’t affect him, not really. 

jungkook had also been fooling around with a trainee from sm on and off for a while now, his second boyfriend of sorts since they’d become a group, so the bottle clink was probably in solidarity or celebration or some frankenstein combination of the two, knowing jungkook. 

jimin had scowled - not at the act, but the reminder of jungkook’s not-really, not-at-all boyfriend - but no one had noticed because taehyung had chosen that moment to contribute to the conversation. 

“i’m attracted to jimin,” he’d announced and everyone had been silent for a second, until yoongi and hoseok had made the mistake of looking at one another and that was enough to set them all rolling, tipping over onto their sides, clutching their stomachs as they laughed and laughed and laughed. 

taehyung, looking mildly baffled but not upset by their reaction, had only quietly added; “and also jin hyung, sometimes,” which again punctuated their raucous laughter with a silence that was only broken by even louder, more raucous laughter, seokjin throwing an arm around taehyung’s shoulders even as he’d been wiping away tears with his other hand. 

“you are a treasure,” seokjin had solemnly professed, “a genuine light in my life,” and taehyung had beamed at him, his smile so wide his eyes winked shut under the force of it. 

jimin remembers looking at them both, looking at them together and then very purposefully looking in the other direction. 

he’d been brave, that day, but not that brave. 

not yet. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

jungkook almost gives jimin pause. 

following his and taehyung’s lovely, touching spectacle over breakfast this morning, taehyung comes to find jimin that afternoon. they have exactly fifteen minutes before they’re due to head into a meeting, followed by a quick break for food and then straight into choreography rehearsals.

jungkook is acting like a kid on christmas day, has dragged as many hyungs as he could physically coerce off to play soccer with him in one of the bigger studios, so they’re alone when taehyung pulls jimin into one of the small workrooms and all but collapses onto him. 

today hasn’t been all that easy for jimin, but it’s instinctual to put that aside when he sees the slump of taehyung’s shoulders, the slight tremble in his hands. 

yoongi has been there for jimin today and now it’s time for jimin to be there for taehyung. it’s not every day that you announce to your best friends of almost a decade that you hope and fully intend to fuck every single one of them before the week is out. jimin might need to grab him a tonic or something. maybe a couple of iv’s. 

“he just -” taehyung starts to say and he doesn’t have to use a name, they both know who he’s talking about. “he feels so much. he’s so much. and i did my best, i made him see, but he was so wrong about this, jimin. he had this so, so wrong in his head. in his heart. it almost killed me.” 

taehyung says all of this on his knees, on the floor between jimin’s spread legs. he has his forearms stacked up over jimin’s thighs, his forehead pressed to them and his head hanging low between his shoulders. jimin’s hands go instantly to the base of his neck, his fingers digging gently into the curve of it, trying to work out the tension taehyung is holding there. 

jimin had known it would be different, with jungkook. and that’s because jimin knows that things are already different, between taehyung and jungkook. neither of them have told him, though he knows taehyung would have, if he had asked. he knows jungkook might have had a breakdown at the knowledge that someone else knew and so jimin hadn’t said anything, but he’d known. 

it doesn’t bother him, though it should. though sometimes it almost feels like it could. like maybe, in some ways, it did. 

“he seems ecstatic now, however you handled it,” jimin says, because jungkook is a changed man and that’s clear for all of them to see. him walking into the kitchen this morning holding taehyung’s hand had been the loudest form of breakthrough jimin has ever witnessed from any of them, except maybe himself. “it seems like he gets it now, however you explained it.” 

they’d all heard taehyung explain it very enthusiastically first thing this morning, but jimin knows that much more must have come before that. he’s not surprised that taehyung is here with him like this. 

“he gets it now, but the things he thought, jimin-ah. the way he thought this was and was going to be -” taehyung’s head dips even lower between his shoulders and his voice cracks on something uncomfortably close to a sob. 

jimin drags his hands back up the curve of taehyung’s neck until his fingertips find taehyung’s jaw and he can tip his head up to look at him. 

“hey, it’s gonna be okay,” jimin assures him, wiping at the tear that spills over taehyung’s eyelashes. “he gets it now and we’ve got all the time in the world to make sure he stays getting it. we’ll work together to make sure he always knows exactly what this is, okay?” 

taehyung sobs again, a different shape to the sound this time and when he presses his face in against jimin’s stomach, jimin holds him there and drags his fingers gently through taehyung’s hair until he’s ready to get up again, ready to keep going. 

“hey, if you need to slow down or take a break or sit down and talk through all of this, we can,” jimin reminds him, because they’d talked about all the ways this could go and he’d made sure it was clear to taehyung even then that picking one way didn’t mean he had to stick with it until they’d seen this whole thing out. “whatever you need to do, we’ll do. i’ll make this happen however you need it to.” 

taehyung turns back to face jimin and reaches for him. 

“however it happens is exactly what i need,” he says, his hand huge around jimin’s. “all i need is for it to happen. we’ve waited for so long, jimin. and i’ll wait longer, i’d wait however long it took, but the last thing i need is more time.” 

and jimin gets it. he’s still knotted up over it, some. he’s still got bits and pieces of it to work through and untangle, but none of that makes him any less impatient for it, now that they’ve started this. 

taehyung tugs hard on his hand, reels him in until jimin bumps in against his chest and for a heartstopping moment jimin thinks he’s going to kiss him. right here, right now, just like this. he finds himself holding his breath. 

“i can’t fucking wait to get my hands on you,” taehyung says, instead and then it’s a battle for jimin to not be the one to kiss him. taehyung is staring down at him, his eyes dark and intense and when his tongue peeks out to wet his bottom lip, jimin feels like a bolt of lightning forks right through him. “i’m gonna give every single one of them what they need, whatever they ask for,” taehyung’s hand lifts to jimin’s face, tilts his chin up, “but if it’s up to me, i won’t waste another day not touching you.” 

and maybe the ‘you’ he uses is universal, but maybe it isn’t. maybe it’s both, because taehyung really doesn’t know how to play favourites; might get momentarily distracted by what’s in front of him but refuses to take sides, won’t ever play them off against each other the way jimin does sometimes, when it’s necessary. when it serves a purpose and usually his own. 

jimin fists both of his hands in the front of taehyung’s shirt to pull him down and grins at taehyung’s widening eyes before he turns his face slightly, presses his mouth to the hinge of taehyung’s jaw, just below his ear. 

“so get back to work then,” jimin says and then he pushes taehyung away, turns him by his shoulders and slaps him hard across the ass, his hand lingering after. “don’t forget i’m waiting, taehyung-ah.” 

_/_/_/

the rest of that day passes in a blur, jimin meaning to pull jungkook aside, hoping to get him alone but feeling oddly relieved when the opportunity doesn’t present itself. 

taehyung is a menace all through dance practice, goes so far as to pull his shirt off halfway through and scowls when three or four of them falter in what they’d been doing. that only makes it hotter, somehow; the fact that he doesn’t try to laugh it off, doesn’t even attempt to tease them. his face stays serious, his jaw clenched and his eyebrows set and jimin finds himself wondering if yoongi had stuck so close to him today not only because he’d known jimin needed it, but also out of sheer preservation. 

in the van on the way back home, jimin leans forward in his seat to grab a strand of taehyung’s still sweat damp hair and wind it around his finger. 

“do a good job for us, tonight, hmm baby?” he says low in taehyung’s ear and the deep growl he gets in return makes him smile. 

it should probably make him slightly concerned for yoongi’s wellbeing, too, but it doesn’t. yoongi’s an adult and he asked for this. louder than the rest of them had, at that. it’s entirely on him, however this goes down and if he can’t handle a riled up taehyung then he made a mistake, getting into this at all. 

that’s precisely why jimin isn’t worried about yoongi, though. 

because if any of them have a snowball’s chance in hell of putting taehyung in his place, it’s yoongi. 

jimin sees a lot of similarities between himself and yoongi, when it comes to how they handle taehyung. or fail to, as the case may be. 

jungkook’s method has always been outright avoidance. namjoon and hoseok pine openly like lovesick losers. seokjin pretends nothing’s happening. 

but yoongi and jimin both like to play with fire. and if they sometimes get themselves burned, well. that’s not exactly the worst thing in the world. 

yoongi was always going to throw himself to the wolves, so really jimin is just helping by poking the beast. he’s a good friend and as such he wants to help yoongi get what he wants. if what yoongi wants just happens to also be what taehyung wants and if what jimin wants just happens to be the both of them (for starters) then that would be what namjoon would call a serendipitous opportunity, wouldn’t it? 

they’re made for one another, jimin thinks, but he _knows_ that they work at being good for one another. this is a labour of love and jimin won’t let taehyung or anyone else take on more than their fair share. 

slow and steady wins the race, as the old saying goes. 

but jimin thinks there’s a lot to be said for fast and absolute; quick and heartfelt. 

the groundwork for this took forever, took thousands of days, thousands and thousands of hours and more moments than they could count. it wore their patience down to the bone and what they’re left with now is pure friction, tension made so much more than merely physical. 

jimin goes quickly and quietly to his room that night, washes up calmly and goes through his skincare routine step by step, easy as you please. he folds his arms up under his head when he gets into bed and his mind is heaving but his heartbeat is steady. 

he’s burning up. 

and he likes it. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

growing up happened backwards for jimin. 

he’d come to seoul as a broken thing, a still breaking thing and the first year or so of being a trainee had made that worse. fractured the already shattered pieces of him into smaller, sharper shards until he was sure he’d end up nothing but dust. 

taehyung had helped him learn to defend himself against the outward impact of everything everyone else tried to force him into, reshape him as. but that had taken time and every scrap of effort he hadn’t already signed away for this, so by the time they’d debuted he’d developed something like a shell; hardened over time, layered thanks to taehyung, thanks to jungkook and namjoon and hoseok and yoongi and seokjin too, now. he wasn’t breaking anymore, but he was still broken and when they hadn’t had time to sleep most days, finding time to heal hadn’t been easy. 

and so, a lot of it hadn’t come from conscious effort. 

a lot of it hadn’t come from jimin himself at all. 

he’d felt reborn, in those early days. empowered and stronger than he’d ever been before because he might not know who he was yet, but he’d stopped letting other people tell him who he was supposed to be. he’d put his foot down by way of outwardly changing nothing at all about how he dealt with those conversations, but inwardly rejecting them instantly; never so much as considering the self-destructive, self-reductive suggestions that were put to him constantly, then. 

seokjin lead him by example in that. 

in hindsight jimin can see that seokjin has always been playing a long game with the company. 

these days he outright refuses to do what they tell him to and what would get an idol’s contract ripped to shreds by any other company at most leaves big hit’s managers scratching their heads at him. 

seokjin had sown the seeds of his eternal dissent from the very beginning, though. and he’d done it carefully and cunningly and expertly, the way he does almost everything. rookie idols can’t say ‘no’ to anything. but rookie idols could say ‘yes’ in different ways; with vary degrees of enthusiasm. anything that seokjin didn’t mind doing or didn’t care about having to say was met with outrageous eagerness. and everything else was welcomed with a lessening degree of interest, until the things he really and truly would rather die than do were accepted with a simple ‘okay’ and a sad smile. 

and so slowly but surely, seokjin had conditioned their staff to want to make him happy. and sometimes they knew that was what they were doing, but sometimes they seemed to operate out of an intrinsic and subconscious desire not to ask him to do anything that would make him unhappy when they could leave it up to him, instead. if you asked them, they probably wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint or explain to you exactly where that desire came from, but jimin could, because he’d watched seokjin plant it in them and nurture it gently to full bloom, sometimes taking years, sometimes taking mere days with the staff members that were particularly weak for him and his big joyful smile. 

seokjin used his happiness as an offensive tool. when jimin started to learn from him, he hadn’t been quite up to offensive measures yet, so he’d let his happiness become a matter of defense instead. at first, at least. 

in the early days, jimin did everything he was told with utmost enthusiasm every single time. but he didn’t let it sink into him and settle, the way he had as a trainee. he no longer looked at who he was expected to be on stage as a direct comparison to and condemnation of who he couldn’t be in real life, no matter how hard he tried. he let the two split, their paths diverging naturally in a way that lessened the pressure he felt and gave him the space he needed to grow, now that he was newly determined to. 

his teenage years had been a kind of slow violence against who he wanted to be. an inescapable erosion of possibilities, because he wasn’t this enough, he wasn’t that enough, he was far too something and would only ever amount to nothing. all the stencils of who everyone around him expected him to be piled up one by one on top of each other until they’d trapped him in the slivers of space they allowed for _him_ , splintered pieces of who he was scattered far apart and never able to form anything close to a full picture. 

taehyung and the way he loved jimin - the way he’d by example taught him to love himself - gave jimin the courage he’d needed to let that stack of stencils finally topple like they’d been threatening to for so long now and when they’d fallen - as they’d sometimes done before - he hadn’t scrambled to right them again, hadn’t let himself feel like he was nothing and no one without them. he’d let them go, left them to get lifted away by the wind, by time, by his turning away from them and no longer looking to see what happened to them or where they’d gone. 

and he’d been nothing, then. but he hadn’t been afraid of that, this time. he hadn’t been alone in that or anything else, not anymore. 

filling himself in had taken a long time. it had taken so long that sometimes it felt like an entire second lifetime in and of itself, but if it was, it was the life he’d chosen for himself and the better of the two, for that. 

this time around, jimin was reborn surrounded by people who loved him. taught and guided and challenged and protected by people who only wanted what was good for him, instead of seeing him purely in terms of what he could be good for. 

they were his beginning. 

the start of this, for jimin, was himself. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

“hyung is _mean_ ,” is the very first thing taehyung says when jimin crawls into bed with him, that morning. 

considering the way he says it - stretching languidly in his sheets and moaning at the apparent pleasure of it, grinning slyly at however jimin’s face looks then - he’s not entirely displeased by this turn of events. 

“did you really expect anything less?” jimin asks, because he can’t imagine why taehyung would. yoongi has never been exactly subtle about the seesaw sexual tension between him and taehyung; the way he clearly enjoys the slide of the scale, the back and forth tipping between being completely in control and absolutely out of it motivating him, the challenge of it exciting him. 

“probably not,” taehyung muses, rolling over to get to jimin, settling in on his back next to him, low in the sheets so he has to look at him, “but he’s seemed soft lately? he’s all gentle hands and soft words of encouragement, this week.” 

jimin snorts. 

“yeah, with _me_ ,” he’s quick to clarify, because yoongi’s got deeper depths than almost all of them; he’s got a wealth of love languages that he uses with all of them in different ways, at different times. “but he’s been like a wound up toy with you. just like usual, except worse. which one of you came out on top, this time?” 

this makes taehyung squint and that makes jimin happy. he loves this about them. 

“neither of us? both of us? i honestly don’t know.” 

there’s never a clear winner with taehyung and yoongi, because they both want the same thing. the struggle is just for show; purely for fun. 

“that’s hot,” jimin says, because it is. he can’t wait to see yoongi take taehyung the fuck down and then gladly, enthusiastically fall apart under him. 

“it sure was,” taehyung agrees, rolling his neck and jimin only woke up like six minutes ago so he’s really still not thinking properly yet when he urges taehyung to sit up and settles in behind him, his hands going automatically to the line of his shoulders. 

if he had been thinking properly, he’d have realized what a disaster this would be; his legs spread wide around taehyung’s hips, taehyung’s bare skin under his hands and the sheets still warm from taehyung and yoongi. there’s fresh scratch marks raised clear and flauntingly across taehyung’s shoulder blades and not as fresh finger tip shaped bruises peeking out over the band of his underwear, high and proud over the cusps of his hip bones and there’s more marks on him, jimin is sure, further evidence of what he’s done this week and jimin doesn’t know who is responsible for what and that makes something clutch at his belly, makes his fingers dig hard into the muscles of taehyung’s neck. 

taehyung only lets his head fall forward in response, makes a small sound that makes jimin’s legs get tight around his hips but he doesn’t say anything and jimin doesn’t either. 

touching taehyung has never been strange or confusing for jimin, even if it what it had meant for him and for them sometimes begged questions of him that he’d had to work to answer honestly. 

what it means has changed and is still changing, but the familiarity of it - the ease of it - has always been the same. 

with his hands on taehyung’s body, with him close enough that he’s all jimin can see, all he can smell and hear, jimin makes the clearest kind of sense to himself. 

even when everything else has temporarily fallen apart, this always feels right. 

so jimin sits and slowly, methodically works the tension out of taehyung’s muscles; works at him with his fingers and thumbs and the heels of his hands and the careful press of his knuckles until taehyung is unwound, boneless before him. 

when his hands fall from taehyung’s shoulders, taehyung reaches back to pull jimin’s arms around his waist. he stacks his own hands over jimin’s, just one of his palms easily covering both of jimin’s. 

“thank you,” taehyung says and jimin both hears and feels it, because his chest is pressed to taehyung’s back now, his cheek pillowed against taehyung’s shoulder blade. 

“you’re welcome,” jimin says, knowing that they both know that what he means instead, is ‘thank you’, too. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

sex has always been easy for jimin. 

his body was and still is the part of himself that he’s most confident in, feels most capable with. 

even when that confidence had strayed into dangerous territory, his will to exert control over his body mixing disastrously with the expectations people used to wield over him through his diet, through how his body looked and when and why, jimin had always been secure in his ability to affect his appearance. now that that’s not a negative, no longer a reduction or strict stipulations put upon him by someone or something else, he still feels the same way. he still knows how to make his body say what he wants it to. 

that translates fairly simply into the absolute control he has over himself with choreography. 

and it translates much the same way for how he has learned to use his body for pleasure. 

in the beginning, jimin had learned to use his body as a weapon. he’d approached sex almost academically; a purely physical science. he’d honed his skills and exercised his talents and that was what brought him pleasure, at first - being great at something. being the best for someone.

jimin has had a lot of easy and uncomplicated sex and over time it became something like stress relief; started out like a war with himself and eased off into something almost like a hobby. he’s had sex with men, with women, with people who identify as both and people who identify as neither, in various ways besides. using his body to make someone feel good is simple to jimin and aside from the necessary if entirely superficial attraction that precedes these interactions, jimin gets pleasure from exercising his skills; from feeling accomplished, from another kind of performance perfectly executed. it’s both different from being on stage and not, but the feeling is similar; the chase of it addictive, the act itself exhilarating, the immediate aftermath purely euphoric and what comes after that a sometimes sharp fall from fulfillment that eventually works itself - whether gradually or not - back up into the thrill of the chase. 

sex has always been easy for jimin because it makes sense to him, he gets it and he’s good at it. 

but jimin is twenty four years old and he’s never had sex with someone he has feelings for. he’s been in love with six different people for years and he’s never touched any of them sexually. 

sex and feelings were two entirely different battles for jimin; one of them much easier than the other and both of them staying distinct, staying very decidedly independent of one another. 

sex has always been easy for jimin. 

being in love wasn’t always easy, was never a completely steady or purely progressive path for him, but he’s comfortable with where he’s at with it, now. 

the prospect of the combination of the two is something he has considered, but never acted on. the potential meeting of the two is what has always given jimin pause, on this issue of ‘them.’ 

jimin knows how to use his body, knows how to make it do exactly what he wants and knows perfectly well what it can do to please other bodies, to make other people feel good and in turn satisfy his own needs that way. 

jimin knows exactly how to touch the people he’s in love with, knows precisely how and where he wants to and why that is and how good it would be, to finally do. 

what jimin doesn’t know is how to let someone else give him what he wants, because he’s never thought about what that is, not when it comes to sex because that was never what it was about, for him. 

but now it is. now it can be. 

jimin’s about to learn what it means to find and trust his pleasure to someones who love him. 

and that’s the part that terrifies him. 

he’s not good at this, yet. there’s no way to practice this before he _does_ it and it’s been so long since he’s had to be vulnerable like this - to learn how to do something right in front of their eyes, without any basis of competence at it to bolster him. 

it’s brand new and it can only ever be that way, with them, because they’re the only ones he’s ever loved. 

loving them doesn’t make it easier to let them see him completely stripped of all competence, with no experience or practice or innate talent under his belt and guiding his path. 

he loves them and he wants to be perfect for them. 

he loves them and that should be enough. 

it should be, but it doesn’t feel like it is. 

it’s a brand new insecurity, or maybe an old one revisited and bass boosted. 

wherever it came from or whatever it’s rooted in, it’s here now and he can’t see past it, can’t figure out how to get around it. 

jimin loves them and he wants to be perfect for them. 

but he isn’t. 

he doesn’t know how to be. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

oddly, walking in on the middle of an almost orgy actually helps jimin a lot, all things considered. 

he comes home after a nice relaxing lunch with sungwoon and he’s vaguely thinking about taking a nice post meal nap or maybe going to find jungkook when he turns the corner and finds namjoon backing hoseok up against the wall outside his bedroom. he pauses, staying still until he’s certain they haven’t noticed him and then he quietly walks closer, aided immensely by his socked feet and their marbled floors. his most pressing question is why they decided to do this here instead of in namjoon’s room, which is right there, until he makes it to the mouth thereof and actually feels his jaw drop when he glances inside and sees yoongi and seokjin tangled up together on namjoon’s bed. 

he kind of wants to ask them what they fuck they’re doing and why they chose to do it like this but he also kind of wants to shove his jeans down his thighs and get his hand on his dick like right the fuck now because he can’t even think about touching any of them before he touches taehyung, but watching them touch each other is no less mindblowingly hot, for that. it’s hotter, maybe, because it’s not about him at all. 

yoongi is arched all the way off namjoon’s bed to wrap himself around seokjin, whatever seokjin’s hand is doing down the back of his sweats making him honest to god whine up into seokjin’s mouth and jimin feels vaguely faint. he sits heavily, all but slumping to the floor like his strings have been cut and he doesn’t remember to be quiet about it, but it doesn’t matter because hoseok is begging for something too loudly to hear anything else and namjoon seems pretty focused on pulling hoseok’s shorts open. seokjin is mouthing sloppily at yoongi’s bruised throat and yoongi has his head thrown back and his eyes screwed shut, his hands fisted in seokjin’s hair and yeah, they’re not paying attention to anything that isn’t one another, either. 

it’s educational, watching the four of them. it’s helpful, actually, that they’re spread out two and two because it gives jimin the opportunity to compare and contrast, to catalog how they respectively react to one another. hoseok is loose, fluid in his pursuit of pleasure; moulded to namjoon and asking him for what he wants, encouraging him with the sounds he makes when namjoon gives it to him. namjoon, in turn, is insistent in a way that jimin has never seen him be for anything outside of their music. he’s completely focused on hoseok, lead only by how much he wants him, his hunger loud in the way he touches hoseok, clear in the words he says low against hoseok’s skin. 

jimin doesn’t know if he’d have the concentration it would surely require to notice all of that if he had to see it alongside what’s happening on namjoon’s bed. 

namjoon and hoseok are totally lost to their want, given over entirely to their need of one another, but seokjin and yoongi are whatever you’d call it if you took that sentiment and gave it teeth. like, a lot of teeth. and really sharp ones. and maybe a sword. 

seokjin touches yoongi like something or someone is trying to rip him away from him, like he’s desperate and determined to leave his mark, to hook his claws in and hold on. jimin wonders if that’s how seokjin is always or if it’s specific to yoongi. he thinks about how seokjin touches jungkook and decides that it’s probably at least partially both. 

yoongi, underneath seokjin, is wild. he’s loud and insistent and unashamedly, unabashedly _gone_. when he touches seokjin, it’s like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, doesn’t have the presence of mind to think about it or even notice that it’s happening. his movements are purely reactionary; an answer to what seokjin says or does to him and it makes jimin breathless to see yoongi like this; so far gone beyond any kind of control and confident enough to let seokjin see him like that, brave enough to let him touch him, like this. 

the four of them act differently, react differently, touch each other and speak to each other and treat each other differently even though they’re all motivated by the same feelings, the very same desires and it both helps jimin understand them individually on a level that he does not, yet, and helps him begin to figure out how he might approach touching them, letting them touch him. 

it’s helpful, because it makes jimin realize something very important all at once, after a single instance of seeing them touch each other like this. 

it helps him figure all of this out a little more because it shows him something he hasn’t considered until right now and that’s this: he doesn’t have to think about how he will touch them or how he might want to let them touch him. he doesn’t have to plan it or practice and even if he somehow could, it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t make him perfect because there is no perfect; there’s only this - and this is better. 

touching them is not something he needs to or even can figure out in advance, in purely theoretical terms. it’s something he can learn with them; figure out as he goes. looking at them now, he can tell that none of them sat down and hashed out how they’d touch each other, when they finally did. looking at how they touch one another’s bodies, the familiarity they already have with one another is starkly obvious. it’s written all over them, bright and shining in the sounds they wring out of one another with the simplest, softest touches. 

maybe jimin doesn’t know how to touch them like this yet, but he knows them and he wants to touch them. wants, very desperately he finds, to be touched by them. wants in a way that’s something else entirely, when he thinks about them wanting to touch him. 

and that’s not the whole of it, not nearly. it doesn’t settle all of jimin’s concerns or soothe any sense of worry right out of him, but it’s something. 

it’s something significant and for now, it’s more than enough. 

he’s taken a step forward in this, stands steadier on his feet and speaks loudly, doesn’t falter when he interrupts them, now. 

it’s easy, he finds, to finally acknowledge out loud and in words to the rest of them and not just taehyung that he is invested in this, that he’s part of it. because he has been from the beginning, from before that even, but saying so to them had felt like a declaration that he wasn’t sure he was ready to make, until right now. 

he implements taehyung’s rules (their rules, really) for this in his absence and is confident that he can, that he should. he acknowledges openly that this includes him in every way it includes the rest of them and doesn’t pause to question if that’s his place, if now is the right time, if they’re all pleased to hear that or not. 

and none of them look at him strangely or ask him what he thinks he’s doing or wonders out loud if he is sure and that, jimin finds, is exactly what he needed from this moment. they don’t react like him finally voicing his part in this is a big deal, because to them it’s not. to them, it’s always been a foregone conclusion, even if they’d maybe thought it might take longer or take more conversation or take a different pace with him than it would with them. 

they let him decide for himself and he doesn’t know why that surprises him because they’ve never tried to decide anything for him or dissuade him of something he was sure of. they’ve only ever supported and encouraged and loved him and he knows that, he knew that, but thinking about this next step in their relationship has him kind of fucked up to the point that he’s been thinking about it like it was just a regular relationship, like it wasn’t _their_ relationship with one another. 

but he speaks now and that part clicks into place for him, leaves yoongi and namjoon exchanging significantly excited and hopeful looks that they probably think are subtle but absolutely aren’t. 

seokjin wraps himself around jimin just like he’d been wrapped around yoongi sixty seconds ago and there’s no tension in it; no matter how hard jimin looks there’s no pause for seokjin where he stops feeling however he’d been feeling with yoongi and then starts to feel however he feels for jimin. it’s seamless, the transition, because that’s kind of in essence what this is - the final lowering of any boundary, any space left between them all. 

when seokjin touches him, jimin lets himself be touched. 

and he doesn’t touch seokjin back, not yet, but he wants to. and he’s not worried about how he’s going to, anymore. 

the hyung line of this group do so much for the group, so much for jimin personally. 

but with namjoon thrown into the mix and caught up in their midst? 

yeah. 

jimin learns a lot, watching the four of them, that morning. 

jimin walks away from that moment somehow surer of several somethings that he’s always known but was still struggling with the combined reality of. 

jimin faces the rest of that day and by extension the rest of what’s about to happen, with a changed and still changing mindset. 

every day, this gets easier. 

every day, jimin gets closer to the reality he’s always, always been running toward. 

_/_/_/

taehyung probably stayed in bed, after jimin got up to go get ready for his lunch date. jimin didn’t see him between then and now, when he just shows up unannounced to climb into the car jimin called to take him to the company. 

“uh … hi?” jimin asks when taehyung’s hand appears out of thin air to stop him from closing the car door. he slides into the seat next to jimin and smiles at him and jimin smiles back out of nothing but pure instinct. 

“hi,” taehyung says, still smiling and it’s so plainly sweet, so bizarrely wholesome seeming that jimin should know, he should _know_ that something is seriously off, here. normally, this expression on taehyung’s face would set him running in the opposite direction, but jimin has a lot on his mind, he’s figured out and processed and seen a lot of things today and his brain is still flicking through it all, caught up on sorting it through so that his immediate awareness is not what it usually is, in this moment. 

“... are you coming to sign those contracts, too?” he asks, because that’s where he’s headed. they all have some appearance agreements to sign before the end of this week and he wants to talk to the styling team about a couple of their next stage outfits while he’s there, so he figured now was as good a time as any to head in to the company. 

“sure,” taehyung says, shrugging, “i’m going wherever you’re going.” 

at this, jimin’s instincts start to tingle. the hair stands up on the back of his neck and he shivers under the feeling. 

“oh … kay,” is all he says because he really can’t think of anything else to say. 

taehyung doesn’t seem to expect him to say anything else, though, because he barely lets jimin finish the sentence before he’s scooting into the middle seat and sitting as close to jimin as he possibly can. when taehyung’s hand slides ever so slowly over jimin’s thigh and towards the inseam of his jeans, he finally registers that he is in trouble. and by now, it’s too late. the car is already moving. there is no escape. 

“um,” he begins, but trails off. taehyung’s fingers are pushed right down between his thighs now, the palm of his hand very almost brushing up against jimin’s dick and like … “what?” 

“i need you to do me a favour,” taehyung says, still smiling that incredibly strange smile and jimin, for the first time in a long time, has absolutely no clue what’s about to come out of taehyung’s mouth. 

“uh. okay. i’ll … do my best?” he says and it shouldn’t be a question but it is because jimin really hopes taehyung isn’t about to ask if he can give him a handjob in a moving vehicle but also it seems kind of like it wouldn’t be totally out of left field if that was exactly what he asked and jimin - to his absolute horror - realizes that he doesn’t know what he would say, if that’s what taehyung asks him. they’ve got plans. there’s supposed to be an order to this thing, a set sequence of events that they’d decided on together. it would be sheer madness to throw all of that away to get jerked off in the backseat of a car. but what’s even crazier is how jimin isn’t at all confident that he could say no. taehyung is touching him in a way that he hasn’t ever before and jimin isn’t confident of anything beyond how much he wants him, how badly he wants taehyung to touch him. 

“it’s about jungkook,” taehyung says and jimin is both relieved and disappointed. fucking hell, this is complicated. 

“what about him?” jimin all but demands, because he doesn’t understand now why this conversation necessitates taehyung’s hand being so near his junk and he needs to get to the bottom of this before he can even begin to deal with that. 

“well,” taehyung sits up a little straighter but he doesn’t move his hand, not a single centimetre. “when i was eating him out earlier,” jimin’s brain trips right over that and sprawls stunned on the floor in front of him, but taehyung just keeps going, “i was teasing him like i always do, right? only not, because it turns out he’s really into getting like … talked down to, when you’re fucking him. or not really talked down to so much as like … you say some mean shit to him and his abs get all tight and he does that little pouty mouth thing and then his dick gets wet or his ass clenches hard as fuck for you, you know? actually,” he pauses, frowning, “you don’t know. but you will. it’s awesome, jimin. you’re gonna love it. anyway.” jimin doesn’t understand how his eyes are still in his head, because they keep widening at every juncture of this apparently never ending speech of taehyung’s. “when you get him like that he shit talks you back, tries to rile you up so you fuck him harder etcetera and just now even when he was trying to swallow my tongue with his asshole he was talking back to me about how he could make you break, if he really tried to.” 

jimin’s eyes definitely almost fall out of his head, at that. 

“so could you please not let him?” 

there’s silence for a moment. a long moment, because jimin needs it. 

“just to be clear, the favour you’re asking me for is that i don’t fuck jungkook before i fuck you? right?” 

taehyung nods, his fingers twitching slightly between jimin’s thighs, a nervous flutter. 

“if you want my advice i’d tell you to just stay away from him entirely, because what might be a slippery slope with anyone else is an oily ravine with jeon jungkook, but yeah. don’t let him trick you into it, please.” 

jimin doesn’t even know where to begin, with this. 

“how would he trick me into fucking him, exactly? and why are you asking me to do this as a ‘favour’? haven’t we already talked about this? didn’t we decide together how this would go?” 

“yeah, yes, but -” taehyung starts to say, but jimin doesn’t let him finish. 

“but what? you think jungkook could - what? flash me a little collarbone, some calves maybe? ask nicely and i’d just fall at his feet?” 

taehyung’s hand grips at jimin’s thigh harder, a reflex maybe and jimin puts his hand over taehyung’s, thinks from the look on taehyung’s face when he does that he expects jimin to take his hand away, but jimin holds it where it is, instead. 

“you think i’d go back on something i promised you? just like that?” 

“no!” taehyung says, sounding both panicked and something else, something jimin can’t put his finger on. “no i don’t think you’d go back on what you said. but. you could do it without meaning to. without realizing. and that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. it wouldn’t change anything all that much. it would be understandable, even, because …” 

it’s hesitation. that’s what the other emotion colouring taehyung’s voice is. something is making him hesitate to say what he’s saying; to talk to jimin about this. but what? 

“why would it be understandable? because what, taehyung?” jimin asks, with his heart in his mouth and his hand digging in around taehyung’s. 

taehyung’s head lowers and jimin’s breath gets lodged in his throat. 

“because,” he says, still hesitating. sounding regretful on top of that, now. “because it’s jungkook.” 

jimin freezes. 

taehyung lifts his head to look at him again and jimin doesn’t move, barely breathes. 

“because it’s jungkook and you fell in love with him first.” 

“it’s not -” the words burst out of jimin before he knows they’re going to, before he decides that they should. “he’s not -” 

taehyung puts his other hand on top of jimin’s. 

“i know,” he says, soothing now but still off, somehow. brittle, almost. “i know you don’t love him more or love him differently to how you love me. but you loved him first and if you want to touch him first, if you feel like it makes more sense for you to be with him first then -” 

his eyes are huge and swimming with emotion and none of it is necessarily negative, he doesn’t sound or seem hurt or upset but he sounds lost, almost, apologetic even like he thinks he has asked too much of jimin, like he thinks he asked jimin for something that jimin doesn’t want to give him and jimin can’t stand it. 

he tugs his hand out from in between both of taehyung’s and lifts it to turn taehyung’s face towards him. 

“i did love him first,” jimin says, because it’s true. “but i could only love him at all because you showed me how. the only reason i can feel the way i do for all of you is because of you, taehyung. you gave me this. you’re where this started, for me. you’re where i began.” 

taehyung’s eyes shine and jimin has to close his own, has to silence the whimper he wants to make at seeing that look on taehyung’s face. his expressions are always so open, so vast and full and he’s looking at jimin like he’s surprised by this; like he’s delighted but _taken aback_ by it and jimin doesn’t know what the fuck he’s been doing, all this time, if taehyung didn’t know all of this already. if the truth of this wasn’t clear to him before right now. 

“this is going to go exactly how we decided it would,” jimin says, leaning in to press his forehead to the line of taehyung’s jaw, needing to touch him. “it’s going to go the way we planned it, because that’s what we want. both of us and everyone else, too, because they agreed, this way works for every single one of us, do you hear me?” 

taehyung nods but doesn’t speak and jimin squeezes his eyes shut even harder, tries so hard not to cry. 

“i don’t need to touch jungkook first. i don’t want to. i want to touch him, i want to touch all of you, but you wanted to be first and i want you to be first, taehyung. i want to be the last person you ever touch for the first time so don’t take that away from me, okay? don’t think i’d let anyone take that away from us.” 

taehyung nods again, firmer this time and when jimin lifts his head and looks up into taehyung’s eyes, he just can’t help it, he can’t hold himself back anymore. 

he uses the hand he has cupped up under taehyung’s jaw to tilt taehyung’s face down and at the same time he leans in and up and the thrill that runs through him when taehyung lets him makes him tremble. 

he’s still trembling, when he lifts his mouth to taehyung’s and kisses him for the first time. 

taehyung is completely, perfectly still. and then he’s reaching for jimin’s elbows, pulling him in closer and parting his lips against jimin’s, kissing him slowly, carefully, open-mouthed until jimin sighs softly. this must give taehyung a boost of confidence, because the next time their mouths touch his tongue is there, wet against the part of jimin’s lips and someone gasps but the sound is instantly muffled because their mouths are sealed together, taehyung’s tongue soft between jimin’s teeth and jimin’s heart beating like it’s trying to escape his body. his hands slide up the sides of taehyung’s neck, he kisses the shiver that causes right off his tongue and then his hands are in taehyung’s hair and taehyung’s half in jimin’s lap, one of his legs thrown over both of jimin’s and his hands slipping inside his jacket, searching for the hem of his shirt. 

it’s so much. it’s too much and jimin has to break away, has to press his mouth to taehyung’s chin, drag his kiss-blushed lips along the line of his jaw. taehyung tips his head up for him, his hands finding the curve of jimin’s waist and holding on and jimin has never been this overwhelmed in his life, has never felt anything even close to this. 

“i love you,” he half gasps, his mouth fitted up under taehyung’s ear, his teeth tugging at taehyung’s earlobe because it’s right there and he can. “no one is getting to touch me before you do. i’m yours before i’m anyone else’s because i always was. i always have been, taehyung-ah.” 

taehyung tenses against him, something almost like a sob rising from his throat and then his hands are sliding hot up around jimin’s ribcage and he’s blindly finding jimin’s mouth with his own again, kissing jimin desperately, ruinously until he’s sucking at jimin’s tongue and jimin is the one that might start sobbing, now. 

“you should kiss jungkook,” taehyung says, breathing hard and looking at jimin’s mouth when he speaks. “you should kiss every single one of them and get that at least out of the way, because i don’t know how i’m gonna let you go again, once i get to have you properly,” he says and jimin has to press his thighs together hard, has to consciously remind himself to breathe in and out. “so give them that much, at least, because i really don’t mind sharing but it’s going to be a long time before i’m not greedy for you, still.” 

jimin laughs breathlessly, shocked by how much all of this is affecting him because it’s not like taehyung has ever been shy about telling jimin how he feels about him or what he wants to do to him but he can’t believe it’s this different, this much more just because he knows for sure that it’s actually going to happen now, because he knows what taehyung’s mouth tastes like, what it feels like when he gasps for breath with his teeth clamped around jimin’s bottom lip. 

not understanding it doesn’t change how it feels, though and jimin still feels a little shaky as they’re tugging their clothes back into place and fixing their messed hair, hooking masks over their ears to hide their wrecked mouths. 

when they get into the building, taehyung’s hand loops all the way around jimin’s wrist and when they step into the elevator he tucks his fingers into the back pocket of jimin’s jeans. 

“jungkook cried out for you, you know,” taehyung says low into jimin’s ear, his tone dark. “he fell apart under my mouth, but it was your name he called out, not mine.” 

jimin clenches his teeth and refuses to meet taehyung’s eyes through their reflections in the wall of the elevator. 

“i fucked him with four of my fingers, made him come dry for being such a fucking brat. and you know what he said?” 

jimin doesn’t respond. neither asks nor wants to know because he can’t handle the knowledge, he can’t handle what taehyung has already told him. taehyung either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care, though, because he drags the tip of his nose up behind the shell of jimin’s ear and tells him, anyway. 

“he said you’d be nicer to him, so much sweeter to him. said he couldn’t wait until you were fair game, can’t wait till he can get on his knees for you and show you how good he can be, but just for you. only for you, jimin.” 

jimin’s eyes lift to the ceiling, stinging. they flit between all four walls of the elevator, his vision swimming. his tongue is between his teeth, the taste of iron souring his mouth and he can’t. he can’t. 

the elevator jolts to a stop and the doors slide open. 

and jimin walks away from taehyung without looking back at him, without pausing at all. 

he hears taehyung laughing softly and still, he doesn’t stop or slow. 

he walks, eyes forward and his heart racing, his thoughts tumbling over one another, until he finds familiarity, until he reaches some place safe. 

and there, pressed against namjoon’s chest, jimin lets himself overflow. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

jimin has three tried and tested methods for dealing with taehyung, when he decides to be impossible. 

they’re all different and nuanced and were formed in direct response to the all out assault that is taehyung’s way of addressing his wants or voicing his desires. 

it goes like this: 

taehyung will say or do something especially unbearably hot and for a while, all jimin could do was shut that shit down as fast and as cleanly as possible, because sure, he figured out he was into men and survived that. then he figured out that was into his bandmates and miraculously, made it out of that alive too. he even, by the grace of the gods alone, crawled unscathed from the train wreck that had been realizing that he wasn’t just into his bandmates, he was in love with them. all of them. 

and so, taking that into account, jimin figured he was probably superhuman or gifted, somehow. 

but equipped for and capable of dealing with kim taehyung? nah. not fucking likely. 

at first, it was mostly just drawn out looks. the kind of stares that almost burned. those, jimin could brush off. 

but then it became a tactile thing. taehyung’s hands on his body in places that he’d been touched fifty times already today, but not like this. not ever like this. getting out of that was largely a matter of sharp, hard slapping. sometimes a rap of knuckles if taehyung was feeling particularly undeterred. 

finally and worst of all, taehyung had opened his cursed, lovely mouth and started to just say the things he was thinking out loud. to jimin. in front of other people. only ever their members, but that in itself made it worse, if you asked jimin because that left him scrambling to collect himself when taehyung had just announced in front of hoseok and namjoon and apropos of absolutely nothing that he was thinking about how much he wanted to suck jimin off right after a show, wanted to drag him into a dark corner and peel his still wet clothes off and stick his whole face in the sweat swamp that was his crotch. 

hoseok had dropped the ipad he was holding and namjoon had choked violently on the cup noodles he’d been inhaling. but the worse part, the very worst part, was how all three of them - taehyung, namjoon and hoseok - had looked at jimin. like they were waiting for him to … what? respond? yeah, not happening. he’d refused to meet any of their eyes and power walked away, instead. 

he’d happened upon seokjin, who had taken one look at his pale, blank face and asked what taehyung had done, now. 

“oh nothing much, hyung. he just announced to half the group that he was thinking about having sweaty exhibionist sex with me.” jimin had maybe been hysterical, but he’d had every right to be, if you ask him. 

seokjin, to his credit, had frowned immediately and very seriously. 

“do you need me to talk to him? because if he’s making you uncomfortable - if anyone ever does anything to make you uncomfortable you only have to come to me, just say one word and i’ll -” 

he hadn’t gotten to clarify what exactly he was prepared to do, in defense of jimin’s honour or whatever, because jungkook had arrived then, just appearing over seokjin’s shoulder in that way he had of constantly doing. 

“who did what to jimin hyung? who are we fucking up?” 

“taehyung,” seokjin had answered without glancing back at him, still staring at jimin. “he said some weird shit about wanting to touch jimin.” 

this had given jungkook a truly hilarious kind of pause. he visibly froze, his shoulders hunching. his mouth had gone tiny, his lips pursed together like rosy little flower petals. 

“oh,” he’d said so very quietly. “and we need to beat him up for that? because … we might need to beat me up, too, then. after that.” 

seokjin had rolled his eyes and jimin had just stared. jungkook to his credit, or maybe to their collective credit, blushed very prettily and did manage to look sorry, at least. 

“nobody is beating anybody up,” jimin had said, for the sake of expediency. and seokjin had raised his eyebrows at that. 

jimin could only shrug. 

“it’s not like him wanting … to do that is a problem. it’s the saying it. it’s him expecting me to know how to handle that. that’s the hard part.” 

“because you don’t know how you feel about it?” seokjin had asked, pure patient and caring hyung in that moment. 

and jimin had paused, but not because he’d had to think about his answer. he knew how he felt about it. he just wasn’t sure whether the rest of them would find it acceptable, how he felt. he wasn’t sure he was ready to find out, yet. taehyung said weird outlandish things all the time and nobody batted an eyelid, but jimin? anything he said in response would be significant, because it was coming from him. it would attract attention. and he didn’t know what kind of attention it would be. 

“i don’t know what i’m supposed to say,” he’d told seokjin eventually, because he knew what he wanted to say, though that was different things on different days. what he didn’t know, was what he was allowed to say. what he could say that wouldn’t make things weird for everyone. “how do you respond to something like that?” 

seokjin had elbowed jungkook sharply under the ribs when he’d immediately blurted “enthusiastically!” and after a brief but brutal tussle, he’d turned back to face jimin again. 

“you respond however you want, jimin-ah.” he’d said it shrugging easily, like it was simple to him. but then he’d looked at jimin again, tilted his head, considering and added - “because … there’s no wrong way to respond to that, or anything else anyone says to you. there’s no right or wrong answers, not here. not when it’s just us.” 

jungkook had nodded, which was easy for him to do considering he was not only a huge baby but also their baby and someone who historically got away with literally anything. he’d been solemn for once, when he’d looked at jimin then, though. he’d looked at him like this conversation was important to him, was something he considered important for them, maybe, and bizarrely, that had helped. 

“okay,” jimin had decided, then and there. “okay, then. thank you hyung. thanks jungkook.” 

they’d both grinned at him and jimin had almost wanted to grimace, because all of his bandmates were incredibly attractive individuals, but jungkook and seokjin specifically were a particular and very arresting kind of attractive - the _constant_ and relentless kind. 

but then they’d reached out creepily in unison, seokjin pinching jimin’s left cheek and jungkook poking a finger into his right cheek like they’d planned and coordinated it in advance and yeah, they were hot as fuck but they were also weird terrible idiots so that was fine, that was totally manageable. 

jimin had swatted their hands away and turned on his heel and marched back into the rehearsal space, taehyung and namjoon and hoseok all looking up at him when he did and seokjin and jungkook following close behind him, throwing themselves down onto their bed rolls and starting up a unprovoked and vicious battle to see who could tie one another’s hoodies strings tighter. yoongi had appeared in the doorway like he’d been summoned, not looking at anyone as he’d perched on the arm of namjoon’s chair, pulling out his phone. 

“we’re disgusting when we get off stage,” jimin had finally announced, after only practicing it twice in his head first and everyone had been looking at him, then, but maybe that was okay. he’d looked at taehyung alone and that had made it feel okay, at least. “i respect whatever nonsense you’re into, but fucking shower before you ever try to touch me.” 

the silence that had followed that had been a big one. long and significant. but then taehyung had nodded and agreed easily and jungkook had suggested - “you could just shower together. conserve water, save the whales!” and namjoon had looked at him like he’d just proposed and hoseok had shoved him so hard that yoongi had had to catch him before they both tipped off the seat, and taehyung had been smiling at them but seokjin was smiling at jimin and just like that the moment had passed without disaster, crisis firmly and simply averted. 

so sometimes now when taehyung voices his thoughts and feelings, jimin meets them head on. 

it goes like this; taehyung announces his thoughts or intentions as they pertain to jimin in a physical and only sometimes sexual way, in recent years going so far as to expand his parameters to include other members too, sometimes alongside jimin in these scenarios but sometimes not. 

and jimin’s reaction to this falls under one of the following three categories; 

first - he shuts it down because he’s just not in the mood. because it’s been a bad day or a very good one and for whatever reason he simply does not feel like entertaining taehyung’s nonsense right then. this one is reactionary, a snapped reply before he realizes he has opened his mouth and a key marker of this one is that he always feels bad, afterward. he inevitably apologizes to taehyung some hours or days later and taehyung waves him off, wraps him up in his arms and is never mad about it, pointedly telling jimin once - “you can tell me shut up whenever you want to. you don’t have to always agree with me or even listen to me. it just helps me to not bottle it up. to get it out.” and that’s why jimin feels bad. because he knows that nothing taehyung says or does is ever intended to hurt or confuse jimin. him wanting to fuck jimin doesn’t hurt or confuse jimin, but his own feelings on it sometimes leave him hurt and confused and that’s hard to explain when he doesn’t understand it himself. he doesn’t always feel that way, doesn’t even mostly feel that way, but it’s there and jimin kind of hates that it is. it’s a process, though and he’s figuring it out. he’s getting there. 

second - jimin meets taehyung toe to toe. listens attentively to whatever taehyung says to him and then responds in kind. this method is both the most fun and the most terrifying. it’s fun because of how it makes taehyung’s whole face light up and it’s fun because whenever any of the others are around to witness it, they give taehyung and jimin their full attention no matter what; look at them and listen to them like they’re directly involved too and even when that’s not true of whatever taehyung and jimin have said, it’s true of what they mean so jimin loves it. for a long time, those moments are the closest jimin thinks he’ll ever get to having what he wants and that’s what makes it terrifying. it’s too much like everything he for a long time thought he’d never get to have and that aches, for a time, in a way that jimin can’t yet remember fondly. 

third - when taehyung is taehyung, jimin bolts. this is a method that jimin finds himself coming back to at different points in time, during different stages in their relationship, for entirely different reasons. at first it was because he didn’t know how to respond, didn’t know he was allowed to, until seokjin and jungkook made him brave enough to try, showed him that he had nothing to be afraid of. then comes a time when he refuses to meet taehyung’s eye, refuses to acknowledge whatever he has said because it’s almost tempting fate, he thinks, to act like he could have this; to think for one second that this could ever become what he wants it to be. 

of late, jimin runs because he wants it too much. because as time passes no one ever tells him he can’t have it, no one says or does anything to dissuade him from his hope and in his wilder moments, when taehyung is looking at him and speaking to him like this with the rest of them there to witness it, watching them like this with rapt attention and interested eyes, jimin can’t trust himself not to act. 

not to just reach out and take and take and take. 

and it’s not time for that. it’s too soon. 

and so jimin runs. 

and someone comes after him; not always taehyung. but even that threatens to make jimin braver than he should be, makes him want to do something that he shouldn’t and it’s a constant balancing act, an overflowing scales stacked with what he wants weighing against what’s right, what they’re ready for and though jimin has spent years learning how to balance it perfectly, taehyung can offset it in seconds, with one word, one look. so now, when jimin runs, it’s not to flee from taehyung, but to regroup in the wake of him. it’s necessary. it’s all he can do. 

one of these three methods is how jimin reacts; all of those moments with taehyung fitting under one or sometimes two categories. 

these three action plans are the only ways jimin finds himself able to react to taehyung, when he gets especially taehyung-like. 

three separate, carefully curated and painstakingly honed means of trying to neutralize the threat that taehyung is. the promise he could be, if jimin was brave enough to challenge convention and circumstance to allow for it. 

three ways to address one problem. 

none of them work. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

it’s almost odd, talking to hoseok when the last time jimin had seen him he’d been getting jerked off by their leader in a hallway of their home. now that jimin thinks about it, this isn’t even hoseok’s first instance of public indecency this week. 

“do you get off on people watching you fuck?” he asks now and hoseok, the most calm and easy going of all of them, doesn’t startle, doesn’t seem surprised, doesn’t even ask when jimin arrived or how long he’s been sitting here waiting for hoseok to take his headphones off. 

he just spins around in his chair and pouts, in thought. 

“i don’t think so? it wouldn’t work for me if it was strangers or something, but if it’s the rest of you, sure.” he nods and shrugs at the same time, smiles placidly like it’s just that simple for him. 

“what are we talking about?” seokjin asks, appearing in the doorway of hoseok’s studio. his mask is still on, his hood still up, so he must have just arrived. 

“group sex, i think,” hoseok answers and seokjin hums as he comes to sit next to jimin on the low couch, automatically reaches for his hand and starts playing with his rings even as he’s using his other hand to unhook his mask and tuck it into the pocket of his hoodie. 

“cool, what about it?” seokjin asks and hoseok starts to talk but jimin zones out from what they’re saying because his phone vibrates in his pocket.

jungkook 👶🆚🐶  
  
wud?  
  


jimin just stares down at his phone, lost in thought.

he can’t help but think about what taehyung had said earlier. taehyung hadn’t been wrong when he’d said that jungkook was dangerous, especially for jimin, but jimin thinks it’s unbearably cocky of him to have said what he did to taehyung, even if they both know he hadn’t meant it in a destructive way. his zeal pretty often easily and cleanly translates to offensive terrorization and they all know that, they’ve all had to learn different ways to deal with it by now. 

rapline just give him whatever he wants without question or fuss. seokjin squares up and then rolls over. taehyung gives in to him when it suits him to, but just passes him off onto someone else if it doesn’t. jimin is the only one of them who ever tries to show jungkook that there are repercussions for his actions. 

and some things are different now, but some things really aren’t.

just made out with namjoon. wby?  
  


jimin rejects the call, when it comes instantly.

wtFFFFFF  
  


how. wHY what  
  


WHAT  
  


jimin almost laughs.

yup. we held hands and talked about our feelings, confessed that we’re in love with one another and then he put me in his lap and we kissed. for a while, actually. hyung’s a great kisser. and those hands, you know?  
  


jungkook doesn’t know and this is exactly what he deserves for being such a little shit.

hand holding AND kissing? first confessions???? hyung why  
  


why do you hate me  
  


and maybe the opposite of that is true, but jimin is mad at him for making something that’s already overcomplicated even harder to navigate, so he persists.

i’m in hobi’s studio with him and jin, now. i can’t decide if i want to watch them kiss or if i want to kiss them myself. wyt? both?  
  


l;;akndovindiosnnask;df  
  


jungkook doesn’t say anything else then, but jimin still isn’t done, is not yet quite satisfied that jungkook has properly learned his lesson.

i hope joon gets around to kissing you sometime soon, jungkook. you’d really like the way he touches you, i think. when i threw myself at him in the hallway he just caught me, bent his knees so i didn’t have to stretch so far to reach his mouth and put his arm all the way around my waist to steady me.   
  


he makes for a pretty great seat, too. sat right down when i pushed him and just let me climb right on top of him, sat so patiently and opened right up for it, let me do whatever i wanted to him. his hands are so big, felt huge on my back, so good when he grabbed my ass. i could have gotten off like that, just sitting in his lap, grinding down on his cock. he felt so good under me, so strong but so gentle. he kissed me so sweetly.   
  


kissed me not sweetly at all, too, but that was kinda my fault. couldn’t help myself, had to rub up against him and suck at his lip. such a hot hyung, with such a lovely mouth. he kissed me till i could barely breathe and if i could have, i’d have begged him to let me crawl between his legs right there, just like that.   
  


i want that hyung so badly. all tall and smart and capable but totally content to just sit there and let me touch him however i wanted. want to touch him everywhere. want to do so much with hyung. i think he’ll let me, too.  
  


yeah, that should do it, jimin thinks. he feels vaguely apologetic towards namjoon, considering how he’s just plucked a play from taehyung’s book of tricks and wound jungkook up and passed him off for someone else to deal with, but namjoon is up to the task, jimin is pretty sure.

“-’d look so good tied up in all those pretty knots,” hoseok is saying when jimin dials back into their conversation and he looks sharply between the two of them, wondering just what he missed, here. 

“oh, are you done sexting jungkook now?” seokjin asks, looking mostly amused but also suspiciously flushed. “you back with us?” 

“he needed a little discipline and it’s not like anyone else is going to do it, so what do you want from me, hyung? the fact that he’s even almost manageable sometimes is all down to me, so you’re welcome.” 

hoseok tips his head, one side of his mouth dimpled in agreement and seokjin frowns but can’t disagree. that doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to, though. 

“i discipline him! remember when he drank my milkshake after i got up from the table to go to the bathroom?” 

jimin and hoseok share an incredulous look. 

“hyung. you put him over your knee and spanked him. and then you felt bad for enjoying it too much and made him a second milkshake when you were making yourself one to replace the one he drank on you.” 

“exactly!” seokjin exclaims and hoseok laughs but jimin thinks this actually makes a lot of their lives make more sense to him. if that’s what seokjin considers discipline, then yeah. many things are all of a sudden much clearer, to jimin. today has really been incredibly educational, on several fronts. 

speaking of which. 

“hey, there’s something i wanted to tell you, hyungs,” he’d actually just gone looking for the first person he found that wasn’t namjoon or taehyung, but the two of them are here now and he loves them, he wants to share this with them, so it works out great. 

“something good or something bad?” seokjin wants to know, but hoseok tosses a pen at him and says, 

“ignore hyung, jimin. you can tell us anything.” hoseok is a wonderful hyung. he’s so kind, so thoughtful toward all of them and it definitely doesn’t hurt that when he gets mad at them for messing up the choreography his stern face is so hot that sometimes jimin fucks up on purpose just to get to see hoseok smoulder at him in mild disappointment. 

“i kissed namjoon hyung just now,” jimin says, not meaning for his voice to drop a little, but it does anyway, like the words themselves decided that they were somehow special, something sacred. 

accordingly, both seokjin and hoseok make small noises of surprise and awe. 

“you did?” hoseok says, like jimin just told him he bought him a present. he sounds _grateful_ and jimin wonders if it would be too soon to kiss him, too. 

“that’s great, jimin-ah,” seokjin says and for a second, jimin had forgotten he was here even though he’s right next to him, still has jimin’s hand in his. jimin turns to look at him and god, he’s so beautiful. he is so, so beautiful and the thought of kissing him, of getting to touch him, almost frightens jimin because what on earth has he done to deserve that. how can he trust himself to handle something (someone) so precious properly? 

“how was that? how do you feel now?” seokjin asks, because he’s not just beautiful on the outside, isn’t only gorgeous in one way. 

jimin reaches to tuck his arm in under seokjin’s, winds them together so he can lean in and rest his head on seokjin’s shoulder. 

“it was really nice, hyung. i feel better. i feel good, about this,” he says, because between watching them touch each other this morning and talking out his fears with namjoon this afternoon, jimin has taken several very important steps forward today. it’s progress that’s not just for one day, won’t only last for today. it’s the kind of progress that he’s actually been steadily chipping away for a long time now, but only realizes the magnitude of now that the final pieces have fallen into place, the big picture clear to him, at last. “i’m ready, now, hyungs.” 

hoseok beams at him and jimin can’t see seokjin, but he feels it when seokjin’s mouth moves where it’s pressed to the crown of jimin’s head. 

“so brave,” seokjin murmurs against jimin’s hair. “such a hardworking boy, even when it comes to all those feelings you’ve got crashing around in there, hmm?” 

jimin closes his eyes and snuggles further into seokjin’s side, pushes gently until seokjin sits forward for a second so jimin can loop his arms around his middle and hold on tight. 

“you know you don’t have to rush yourself though, right?” hoseok asks, quiet like the moment calls for that deference. “you know we’ll all wait however long you need and we won’t mind at all, don’t you?” 

“i know hyung,” jimin tells him without looking at him, without opening his eyes. seokjin has lifted a hand to push his fingers through jimin’s hair now and he’s so warm against him, such a constant comfort to jimin in so many different ways, sometimes all at once. jimin can feel his thoughts start to slow, knows he can fall asleep right here, just like this and they’d let him, they’d tuck a blanket over him and talk quietly so as not to wake him. today has been a big day. jimin’s head and heart haven’t really stopped all day, all week maybe. 

“m’not rushing, hyung,” he says around a yawn. “i just didn’t realize how far i’d come, already. needed you all to show me, to help me see. i was ready already, hyung.” 

he doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up seokjin is gone, a pillow that wasn’t here before tucked between jimin’s head and the seat of the couch he’s lying on, now. 

he must make some kind of sound, rustles the blanket that’s thrown over his legs, maybe, because hoseok turns in his chair and then slides out it, goes to his knees on the floor and crawls until he’s next to jimin. 

“good morning, sleeping beauty,” he says, smiling at jimin like he’s pleased to see him and he comes easily when jimin reaches for him, the wide and happy curve of his mouth the last thing jimin sees before his eyes slip shut again and hoseok kisses him for the first time. 

“hi hyung,” jimin says when he pulls away and hoseok’s grin is so bright, so full that he has to lean right back in. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

when jimin gets home, he means to go to his own room, but finds his feet taking him to taehyung’s, instead. 

“hey,” he says, knocking lightly on the door frame and then leaning against it, shoving his hands into his pockets because he feels kind of like he’s in the middle of something like the biggest energy rush of his life. he doesn’t know what to do with his hands anymore, doesn’t know what to do at all. 

“hi. hi, come in, come here,” taehyung says, sitting up straight on his bed and reaching out for jimin with grabby hands. 

jimin takes a flying leap at the bed, landing half on top of taehyung, who only laughs at him in response. 

“you’re in a good mood now, huh?” he asks and right, jimin had all but totally forgotten that he’d had to power walk away from taehyung this afternoon before he’d had to push him _and_ jungkook down an elevator shaft instead. 

“the hyungs kissed it all better,” jimin tells him and rolls his eyes at how taehyung’s light up. “you ready for tonight? need to talk about anything? tell me anything?” 

taehyung tugs gently at the chain around jimin’s neck until the clasp is back where it’s supposed to be and doesn’t say anything at all, for a minute. 

“i don’t think so?” he decides. “i’m excited. jin hyung came home and went back out again so i’m pretty sure it’s namjoon hyung tonight? i have such a huge crush on him, it’s kind of embarrassing.” 

sometimes, taehyung’s total lack of tact or subtlety is one of jimin’s favorite things about him. 

“that’s almost unbearably adorable,” jimin tells him, noticing now that taehyung has actually made an effort to style his hair and smells faintly like his favourite perfume, one jimin bought him for his birthday a couple years ago. “you’re very, very cute and i’m excited for you to fuck your crush, at long last.” 

“ugh,” taehyung says, his nose crinkling sweetly, making him look momentarily so much younger, “me too, though. maybe after tonight i won’t pop wood every time i see him in shorts.” 

jimin snorts, because trust taehyung to dream of the truly and totally impossible. 

“yeah, good luck with that, babe,” jimin says, sitting up and kissing taehyung on the cheek before he climbs to his feet again. 

“have fun,” he says as he walks to the door. “and give namjoon-hyung our best, hmm?” 

taehyung nods very seriously, even throws in a salute for good measure. 

“oh, wait, there was something i needed to tell you, actually,” he calls out and jimin pushes the door back open again, takes one step back inside. 

“i love you,” taehyung says and when jimin smiles, it feels like the expression turns a light on in him, makes him feel like he could glow. 

jimin tells taehyung the same, catches the flying kiss taehyung sends his way and then he wanders away, making it to his room this time, now that he’s checked in with taehyung and is assured that he’s still fine with all of this. 

and even though he’d taken an unplanned nap this afternoon, he is exhausted, he finds, when he steps out of the shower and sits down on the side of his bed to air dry. 

today has been a long one, in a lot of different ways. 

today has been a long time coming, too. 

so jimin pats on his toner, smoothes his oil on over that and climbs into bed feeling much the same way he does after a show, lit up and tuckered out. 

he sleeps deeply and dreams of the comforting, close press of bodies he doesn’t need to see to recognize. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

jimin wakes up feeling refreshed and restored; feels like he could take on the whole world and win, when he climbs out of bed and dresses in warm, loose clothes that he’ll be comfortable in in the recording booth. he has vocals to track today and he’s got the earliest schedule according to the calendar, so he leaves without seeing anyone else. 

his voice is strong today, it does exactly what he asks of it and he always enjoys being in the booth, but he especially enjoys it today. both the producer and engineer are smiling when he steps out to hydrate and take a break and jimin feels good, feels great. 

when he checks his phone, that does not change.

tae💕  
  
good morning! did you sleep well?  
  


jimin smiles.

i slept great, did you? what are you doing now?  
  


i slept well! namjoon hyung didn’t even snore. just kinda purred, which was cute. yoongi hyung is sleeping next to me now and jin hyung just came to ask me for permission to jerk off watching joon hyung fuck 'guk. i think i’m gonna get up and make some breakfast.   
  


and yeah, a text isn’t gonna cut it here so jimin calls taehyung instead.

“hello?” 

“yeah - uh. what?” 

“what what?” taehyung asks and then his voice gets quiet, far away. he’s talking to someone else in the background. “sorry. i woke yoongi hyung but it’s okay, he has things to do today anyway, i think, he just leaped out of bed like a scalded cat. what’s up?” 

“um, you wanna run what’s going on at home right now by me one more time, maybe?” 

there’s a quiet rustle, taehyung getting out of bed, probably. 

“oh! well yoongi came here looking for namjoon first thing this morning and i think he was mad at him for something but i talked him into napping with us instead and that was cool, one me two hyungs, but when i woke up again namjoon was gone and then a while later jin came to ask if he was allowed to touch himself while he watches namjoon fuck jungkook. isn’t that awesome? he already looked like he’d barely survived some kind of sexy landslide - jungkook, probably - but he was squirming on the spot, asking me what he was and wasn’t allowed to do. sooo hot, jimin-ah.” 

jimin has to sit down on the studio couch. hard. 

“that’s …”

that’s probably nothing surprising, all things considered. he can hear taehyung hum to himself over the soft clack of clothes hangers like this is just any other morning, like none of this is shocking to him and that’s probably because it isn’t. taehyung’s known what they were doing this whole time and so did jimin. 

but even knowing what they were entering into together, jimin had been thinking about this in a very specific, very subjective way. all of them were going to touch taehyung and then taehyung was going to touch jimin. and just that much had been something jimin still had to wrestle with, because he knew he wanted it, he knew it felt right, but he still wasn’t sure of his own role in it, not until he’d seen the hyungs and talked to namjoon. between that and yoongi’s sure, certain support, taehyung’s blanket honesty, seokjin’s sweet, careful patience, hoseok’s understanding and jungkook’s bullheaded, doubtless enthusiasm (once taehyung had corrected him on a few key issues) jimin has been able to follow their lead and step over the unnecessary boundaries he’d placed around himself, cut right through the ribbons he’d knotted himself up in. 

so now he’s not only determined to do this and certain it’s the right thing for all of them, but sure that he’s ready for what this will mean for him, too. confident, finally, that there’s nothing left for him to worry about. 

he’d figured that out all of yesterday. 

and today he wakes up in a world where early morning threesomes and newly negotiated power dynamics and surprise bed partners are commonplace, now. 

yeah, jimin’s ready. but he’s still gonna need a second. 

first, he should probably prioritize. 

“where’s hobi hyung? is he home?” 

“yoongi said he was heading out to finish some stuff up at ‘hope world’, he had a deadline today for the new album tracks and wanted to do one last listen on the studio monitors.” 

“okay, cool. once he’s not there and being left out.” 

taehyung’s voice had been a little distant, his tone distracted like he’d had the phone jammed between his chin and his shoulder as he did something else, because he always forgets that speakerphone is a thing until someone else reminds him, but there’s a pause and then his voice is louder, clear now. 

“that’s what you’re thinking about? even after everything i just told you, that’s where your focus goes?” 

jimin shrugs even though taehyung isn’t there to see him. 

“well, yeah. i’d be sad if i was at home and the rest of you were all cuddling or fucking and i was just by myself because no one thought to tell me.” 

taehyung laughs softly, fondly. 

“are you going to want us all to message our whereabouts and activities to the group chat? just so no one accidentally gets left out? why don’t you just chip us all, jimin-ah?” 

“oh shut up,” jimin gripes, “you’re telling me you wouldn’t be sad to wake up and find you missed out on some mass cuddling or group sex? don’t lie to me kim taehyung, you’re in this up to your neck just like i am. why do you know where hobi hyung is, hmm? why was the first thing you did this morning to text me?” 

a lengthy and pointed silence follows. jimin waits patiently. 

“ …. yeah, fine. you got me. i’m actually a massive sap. like even when seokjin hyung was standing there, shuffling from foot to foot waiting to see if i’d let him get off with kook and joonie, i wanted to pinch his cheeks just as much as i wanted to tell him to get on his knees and beg me, just to see if he would.” 

sometimes, jimin thinks he and taehyung have patented their own particular brand new way of being in love. ‘tender horny’ or ‘fondly savage’ or some strange, lovely mix of the two. 

while he’s lost in thought, mentally making snow angels in his nostalgia, taehyung speaks again, sounding distracted again now, albeit in a different way. 

“hey uh i think i can hear yelling, i’d better go see what’s going on, i’ll call you later?” 

jimin hums. 

“sure, babe. call me if there’s anything wrong, yeah?” 

“‘f course. love you, bye.” 

“love you, too,” jimin says without even thinking about it, without having to and then taehyung’s gone and hyowon is walking back in, raising his eyebrows at jimin to ask if he’s ready to head back into the booth. 

“let’s get back to it, hyung,” jimin says and he doesn’t mind leaving his phone behind him, locked and dropped onto the couch when he stands and stretches. 

whatever’s going on, he trusts taehyung to deal with. 

no matter what happens, it’s nothing they can’t handle together. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

a couple hours later, jimin has received a message from taehyung reassuring him that everything’s fine, but also giving him a heads up that yoongi is probably going to need to talk to him sometime soon. 

that intrigues jimin more than anything else, because yoongi is the one of them he’s thought of as being the most even keeled about all of this. 

hoseok and namjoon are enthusiastically along for the ride, jungkook is like a man possessed and dragging seokjin along with him in that. taehyung and jimin have known what they’re about since the start. but yoongi seems to have his own idea of how this is supposed to go; has found a way to lead and direct things even when that’s not a role he asked for in this. it’s easy to accommodate him when he’s so loud - so sure - about what he wants. 

but that also means that jimin can’t imagine what yoongi might have to talk to him, about. him alone, at that. 

he’ll have to wait and see, he supposes. 

in the meantime, he climbs into a car and puts his airpods in so he can listen to the vocals he just tracked on the way to his next schedule. 

this one is with namjoon and jungkook; a reshoot of some solo shots they needed to re-style for some reason or another so jimin is meeting the two of them at a studio in gangdong. 

they’re already there when he arrives. 

the shoot is still being set up, people traipsing back and forth with equipment and props, but jimin’s eyes go instantly to namjoon sitting in the makeup chair, jungkook sitting on the floor in front of him staring up at him almost more adoringly than he always does. his eyes flick away from namjoon when jimin walks towards them, drawn to the movement or jimin’s newly brighter blue-grey hair, maybe, and the double take he does would be cute if it didn’t make jimin’s heart start to race, instead. 

he hasn’t seen jungkook or talked to him since he’d textually tortured him yesterday. he knows from the stupidly adorable chart jungkook had sent to the group chat this morning that jungkook has managed to bag his man and that was before his man fucked him while seokjin watched, this morning. 

there are plenty of reasons why jungkook is dangerous. the fact that he’s who jimin first fell in love with isn’t even the half of it. 

“hyung,” jungkook says, scrambling up off the floor as jimin walks over to them but not getting to his feet, staying on his knees next to namjoon and reaching out to hug jimin around the waist once he’s within range, instead. he’s bare faced and bundled up in one of namjoon’s hoodies and getting passed around between his hyungs like a beloved, shared chew toy is a really, really good look for him. he’s glowing, when he tips his face up against jimin’s hip to smile at him. “hyung i missed you.” 

the make up noona mists namjoon’s face with finishing spray and then walks away, taking her phone out and pulling up a game as she calls a ten minute warning to jungkook over her shoulder. 

“when did you have time to miss me?” jimin asks, running a finger from jungkook’s temple down under the sharp line of his jaw. “weren’t you busy with your hyungs all morning?” 

jungkook almost blushes, at that. not in embarrassment, though. it’s something closer to pride making his skin flush. or the memory of what he’s been getting up to, maybe, combined with his delight at hearing that jimin knows all about it. 

“he was busy with his hyungs this morning and last night, actually,” namjoon says, standing up out of the make-up chair and dropping a hand to jimin’s other hip, squeezing just slightly when he slides by him. “why don’t you catch jimin up on your conquests while i’m gone?” he suggests to jungkook and then he’s walking away, striding into frame and standing with his hands in his pockets to await further instruction. it’s so cute, how he still doesn’t know what to do with his body, sometimes. it’s nothing close to cute, when he knows exactly what to do with it. 

jimin takes his place in front of the mirror and isn’t at all surprised when jungkook stays where he is, just sits back on his heels to get comfortable. 

“do i even want to know what that means?” jimin asks, because he absolutely does want to know, but he also knows that he’d definitely be better off not knowing. that’s kind of a theme, with all things jeon jungkook. 

jungkook shrugs, doing his best approximation of bashful. it’s not even close. 

“it’s nothing, hyung,” he starts and jimin rolls his eyes. he lifts jungkook’s chin, makes him look up at him when he tries to look down and away, instead.

“whose bed did you sleep in last night, hmm?” he asks and jungkook’s eyes get bright, almost shine with it. 

“hobi hyung’s …” he answers and jimin wants to laugh at how obvious he makes it that there’s more to add - more to be said - but he doesn’t, because it really isn’t funny at all, how much jimin wants to hook his fingers behind jungkook’s teeth and put his mouth to his ear and tell him exactly what he’s going to do to him, when their time comes. 

“and who else slept in hobi hyung’s bed with you, huh jungkook?” 

“yoongi hyung. hobi hyung and yoongi hyung,” jungkook says almost in defeat, though he hasn’t lost a thing. has never taken an ‘L’ in his fucking life, if you ask jimin. 

he lets his hand fall away from jungkook’s face but smirks when jungkook stays exactly as he is; on his knees, looking up at jimin like there’s nothing and no one else to see, if he’s in the room. 

when jimin leans forward and down, peers into jungkook’s face from up close, jungkook doesn’t startle, doesn’t move an inch. 

“so that’s joon hyung, jin hyung, hobi hyung, yoongi hyung _and_ our taehyung, right?” 

jungkook swallows so hard that jimin sees and hears it. 

“not - not jin hyung. not properly. tomorrow, he said, but -” 

jimin snorts and jungkook’s eyes widen. he’s stunning like this; being so good, so obedient before jimin. he seems small, though he’s anything but and jimin has to admire his commitment to making himself shrink around them, just because that’s how badly he wants to feel smaller than them. easy to handle, if it’s for them. 

“so by tomorrow, you’ll have fucked all your hyungs except me, is that right?” 

jungkook nods, the motion jerky like he’s not quite sure if he’s supposed to be agreeing, like he’s not sure what he’s agreeing to. 

“imagine that, jungkook,” jimin marvels, shaking his head. “you’ll have fucked every single one of your other hyungs, but you won’t even have gotten to kiss me.” 

it’s like jungkook short circuits. 

his eyes get even bigger and his mouth hangs open and then it gets very small indeed, his jaw clenching with the tiny twist his mouth makes because he’s petulant now, he’s as close to a tantrum as jimin has ever seen him and this, at last, makes jimin truly laugh. 

“damn, that sucks, babe,” he says, sitting back in his seat and crossing his legs, folding his arms over his chest and smiling at the hair stylist noona when she steps up behind him. 

he’s still laughing to himself when he steps in front of the camera an hour later. 

jungkook is in namjoon’s lap, still pouting and complaining and namjoon is switching between nodding with big, sympathetic eyes and petting his hair and almost-glaring across the set at jimin, who has to shake his head and roll his shoulders to get it together for the shoot. 

seokjin’s mass text advertising his current availability at home only serves to make jungkook’s complaints louder and more petulant and it’s hilarious but it’s also backfiring on jimin spectacularly because he especially wants to kiss jungkook when he’s being an insufferable little brat; an adorable little nightmare like this. 

“this pains me just as much as it pains you, you know,” he tells jungkook, letting him cling to him when they’re changed again and waiting for the car to arrive to bring them home. 

“then stop it, hyung, stop torturing me and let me touch you already, _please_ ,” jungkook whines with his hands inside the kangaroo pocket of jimin’s hoodie and his face pressed between the folds of the hood and the curve of jimin’s shoulder. he’s so big, crowded over and around jimin like this and he’s asking so nicely, begging really, and there’s nothing jimin loves as much as making a big needy baby pout and whine for him, except maybe this - because nothing else compares when it’s jungkook who is like this for him, so desperate that jimin almost, almost wants to take pity on him, but - 

“nah, sorry. this is way too much fun,” jimin tells him, the decision made a whole lot easier for him when jungkook scowls. he presses his face against the side of jimin’s throat and breathes him in, his arms going tight around jimin’s waist for a second and then he whimpers pitifully and pulls away. 

jungkook is again loudly complaining to namjoon when they get home and traipse into the kitchen and then jimin lifts his face to seokjin’s and kisses him right there in front of the two of them, stays still and basks in it when seokjin dips back down to kiss him again, properly, sweeter and deeper now that he seems to realize jimin isn’t going to push him away. 

the whole way to his bedroom, jungkook is at his heel, griping and whining and wringing his hands and trying to logic jimin into deciding that it would be ‘fair’ and ‘kind’ of him to kiss jungkook now, too. 

for a moment, it’s absurd to jimin to think that taehyung really thought jungkook could hoodwink him into anything. 

but then they arrive at jimin’s bedroom door and he turns around to cut jungkook off once and for all and he sees, to his dismay, that jungkook’s huffing and puffing as he trailed after jimin through the house hadn’t just been because of his petulance. he has taken off his jacket and discarded it somewhere along the way. his sweater is gone too and he’s standing here now in front of jimin in just a pair of cargo pants and a tank top that he’s pretty sure is hoseok’s, because jimin does not recall jungkook owning clothes that dip this low under the arms. he can see almost the entire sides of jungkook’s trim, tight little waist, gets a glimpse of ribs and the beginnings of abs and then a flash of nipple when jungkook catches jimin looking and lifts a hand ostensibly to push his hair back out of his face but in actual fact just to flex his sizeable bicep. 

and fuck him for that alone, honestly. 

jimin yanks him in by one side of that barely there shirt and lets jungkook catch himself on the door frame so he doesn’t fall. 

“you know what jungkook?” jimin grits out from mostly between his teeth. 

“what, hyung?” jungkook asks, breathless. his nostrils flare and his eyes are on jimin’s mouth and he makes no attempt to disguise that fact. 

“you’re on a time out for two days, now. and next time you complain about it, it’ll be three.” 

he shoves jungkook away from him and almost slams his bedroom door shut behind himself. 

he throws himself down onto his bed and he very pointedly, channeling every ounce of self control that he has, does not scream. 

_/_/_/

jimin spends a couple hours working his frustrations off in their home gym. 

he mostly stretches and soothes the general soreness of being an idol from his muscles with a foam roller. these days, the gym has become a place for jimin to take care of himself, rather than somewhere he goes to punish himself, as had once been the case. he finishes up by spending twenty minutes lying on the floor in the horizontal splits, his phone propped up against one of namjoon’s rolled up pilates mats so he can catch up on his instagram stories. 

when he gets back to his room, yoongi is sitting on the floor by his bedroom door. he’s cross-legged and his arms are sitting slack in his lap. his hood is pulled up and jimin is frowning when he stops in front of him. yoongi doesn’t look up at him, so jimin drops down into a crouch. 

“hyung?” he asks, because taehyung gave him the heads up that yoongi was going to want to talk to him, but he hadn’t said it was going to be like this - he hadn’t warned jimin that something was wrong. “why are you sitting out here?” he asks carefully, because when yoongi is grappling with something, sometimes you have to take the back roads to get to any answers. jimin knows that if he asked yoongi what’s happening, why he’s here looking the way he does, it might make yoongi second guess himself and bottle whatever this is back up. 

yoongi has always been brutally honest with all of them, but it had taken him a while to apply that to his feelings. when he’s still working through something, or unexpectedly finds in himself something that he’s confused or frightened by, he gets agitated about that. it’s easy for him to be honest about his struggles, but letting them see him struggle to be honest isn’t quite as simple for him, not yet. jimin is glad that yoongi came to him with whatever this is, because they’re not all great at giving him what he needs, when he’s like this. 

“i wanted to talk to you,” yoongi says, still looking down at his own hands instead of lifting his face to look at jimin. “i knocked and you didn’t answer, but taehyung said you were home. i knew you’d come back here eventually.” 

so he’d sat here. and waited. 

jimin thinks briefly about calling in reinforcements. seokjin is busy, but he’d come if jimin said yoongi needed him. hoseok could be home, would come in a heartbeat if jimin called. if it gets bad, he’ll need namjoon, he knows. for now, though, he decides to figure out what exactly is going on, first. 

“let’s get you up, hyung,” jimin says and it both reassures and sends him into high alert when yoongi just lifts his arms into the air and lets jimin lean down and scoop him up off the floor. it’s worrying that yoongi is clearly deep in whatever this is, but it’s good that he’s willing to let jimin help him. it makes jimin proud, to know that his hyung trusts him this much. 

yoongi doesn’t question it when jimin gets him on his feet and leads him back to his own room instead of into jimin’s. he’ll be more comfortable in his own space, jimin figures, so he pushes yoongi’s door open and gently guides him in, follows on his heels. when he gets the door closed and turns to face yoongi, he’s sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. 

for the first time in his life, jimin experiences what it must feel like to be namjoon, because he crosses the floor in two huge, clean strides. 

“what is it?” he asks yoongi, getting to the point now, because yoongi either isn’t trying to pretend that he’s okay anymore, or isn’t able to. either way, they need to figure this out now. “did something happen? is this about … is it us, hyung?” 

yoongi’s lets his hands fall from his face to tuck them under his armpits, his arms crossed over himself as he seems to rock in place for a second, awkward and tense. 

“it’s so stupid,” he says and jimin has to bite at the inside of his cheek to keep himself from interrupting, to stop himself from disagreeing. he doesn’t know what this is about, but he knows it’s not even a little bit stupid, if it has yoongi sitting before him like this. “i don’t even know where this is coming from, i just … it’s so, so stupid.” he shakes his head and then tilts his face away from jimin like he can’t bear to look at him, like he doesn’t want jimin to see him like this. 

“hey,” jimin says, stepping side ways and then going to his knees in front of yoongi because he doesn’t know if yoongi would be okay with being touched right now but he wants to see him, he needs yoongi to know that he wants to see him, even like this. especially like this. “whatever it is, it’s not stupid. you’ve been telling me for years that the tiniest, most irrational things that upset me are important if they hurt me, if they confuse me, so why wouldn’t the same be true for you?” 

“because it’s so stupid, jimin-ah.” his face is blank and pale, he looks almost hollowed out by whatever it is and jimin knows that no matter how stupid it may seem to him, no matter how stupid it might look on the surface, something about this is hooked deep in yoongi. “it’s so, so stupid.” 

jimin sits back on his heels and hums, still watching yoongi but making no move to touch him, though he wants to. 

“why don’t you tell me what it is and we can figure out together whether it’s stupid or not,” he offers, because this is what yoongi does for him, when he gets dragged under by something. yoongi has always made himself a safe space for the rest of them; a blank canvas for them to sketch their problems out onto and make sense of and it’s rarer for him to need the same, rarer still for him to go to someone who isn’t seokjin or hoseok with that, but he came looking for jimin for this one. jimin wants to be able to do this for yoongi. he wants to be whatever yoongi needs. 

yoongi seems to deflate where he sits. his shoulders slump and his posture gets even worse than it normally is, his whole body trying to curve in on itself. just when it looks like he’s about to try to actually disappear, he pulls himself together. he straightens his spine and pushes his shoulders back and sets his hands on his knees. 

“i had a fight with namjoon,” he says, with a brand new iron undertone to his voice. “i chased him through the house and threw books at him.” what it is about telling jimin this that is giving yoongi strength, jimin doesn’t know, but he’s got time for however yoongi needs to process this. “i was so, so mad at him. i was about to throw some hardbacks at him and i didn’t even care right then if that was going to hurt him. namjoon, jimin. i was going to hurt namjoon.” 

and jimin instantly gets what yoongi is trying to tell him, when he stresses that. because yoongi could never be capable of hurting any of them, not on purpose, but he’s not capable of hurting namjoon even accidentally. he could throw off a witch’s curse if the alternative meant hurting namjoon. so if that’s where this brought him, it’s about as far from stupid as something can be. 

“but you didn’t, right?” jimin asks, though he already knows the answer, because he knows yoongi. it’ll help yoongi to say it; to hear himself say it, jimin thinks. 

“no, i -” yoongi pulls his hood back, finally, but folds it to sit bunched up against his neck like he feels over-exposed. “jin-hyung and hoseok were there, they interrupted before it could get any worse. but then jin-hyung asked what was going on, what it was about and he somehow figured it out before i did.” 

that in itself isn’t all that strange or unusual. they pretty routinely pick up on or see things in one another that they themselves are too close to register. it’s helpful, mostly, but it can be painful, too. jimin can guess which of the two this instance happened to be. 

“okay,” jimin says, because he’s following so far, but he still doesn’t see why yoongi could think that any of this was - 

“i was jealous,” yoongi blurts, interrupting jimin’s thoughts. “i thought i was mad at namjoon because he’d completed jungkook’s idiot bingo before i did but not even i’m that dumb, it wasn’t that. it was that he’d …” yoongi pauses, sucks in a breath and bites at the flat line of his mouth. “i was jealous because he kissed you before i did. because i felt like that somehow meant you didn’t want me when i know it doesn’t, but i still …” 

when yoongi trails off, silence follows. 

jimin wants to speak, he tries to, but he can’t. he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. 

“see?” yoongi says, his shoulders rising again, his feet lifting up off the floor so he can hide behind his knees, “it’s so, so stupid and i -” 

jimin’s hands on his ankles make him stop. jimin gently pulls yoongi’s feet back down onto the floor and then he settles on his knees between yoongi’s legs. yoongi just watches him, his eyes serious and his face still drawn and wan, his hands balled up into frustrated, white-knuckled fists. 

“why did you feel like that? why did that make you feel like i didn’t want you?” jimin asks, because that’s the part that still doesn’t make sense. that’s where the knot of whatever this is lies. 

yoongi opens his hands, but only to push them into the sheets on either side of his thighs, his fingers clawed and desperate. 

“i saw that stupid chart jungkook made and it made me think about …” he sighs and then shuts his mouth so hard that jimin hears his teeth clack. he breathes in through his nose. “it made me think about namjoon and hoseok. and then hoseok and taehyung. how jungkook came to find me that first day because there was nobody else home. i already hated that taehyung just started in on all of this without telling any of us, i hated having a fucking tantrum about it in front of all of you. and then me and taehyung …” this sigh is different. shallow. softer. “and then i thought i was good, i thought i was over whatever this had been, but the thought of you going to find namjoon, wanting to kiss him first just …” 

“made you think you were nobody’s first choice, huh? made you think none of us wanted you the most?” 

yoongi slumps forward, bows like the weight of his insecurity is pushing down on him. jimin’s hands reach for him but they only slow the inevitable when yoongi keeps tipping until he falls right off the bed. he sits heavily, thudding to the floor like his body weighs so much more than it does and he can’t bring his knees up, not with jimin still sitting between his spread legs, but he tries to cover his face with his hands when the tears start to fall. 

at the sight of that - his hyung crying because he thinks he’s not anyone’s favourite, isn’t wanted as much as the rest of them are - jimin wants to cry too. he wants to cry out of sheer frustration. he wants to cry because his heart is breaking, he’s pretty sure. he wants to go and hammer on taehyung’s door until him and seokjin come fix this, with everyone else’s help. but first, he’s going to try and do what he can by himself. he’s going to give yoongi everything he’s got and if he still needs more after that, then jimin will get that for him. 

“hyung,” he says softly, scooting back a little so yoongi can fold his legs in front of himself and then doing the same, too. “are you surprised that all of this is happening? did you think it would, before it did?” 

and maybe that question is just far enough out of left field that yoongi feels like he can answer it without making what he’s feeling right now worse, because though his tears don’t slow, he sniffles and then blinks to clear his eyes. 

“i mean i - i hoped, sometimes. i wanted it to happen. but i didn’t think it was a sure thing. mostly i didn’t even think it was possible, let alone likely.” 

jimin reaches out slowly, gives yoongi enough time to move his hand if he doesn’t want jimin to touch him, but he doesn’t and so jimin carefully takes yoongi’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together and letting them lie like that on yoongi’s thigh. 

“i knew it was going to happen,” he says and yoongi looks at him with wet, shocked eyes. “i knew we were going to be different, after that thing with taehyung when we were trainees still. i didn’t know that it was going to like this, not then, but it didn’t take long for me to figure it out.” jimin smiles, thinking back to that time. remembering the heady mix of shock and excitement he’d felt, when he’d realized where this could go, if they gave it the space and time it needed to grow. “we talk about it sometimes like it started with taehyung, right? like all of us wanting to fuck him was what started all of this?” 

yoongi nods, slow and uncertain. he lifts the back of his free hand to his face and starts to wipe at his tears, but quickly drops his hand back into his lap when jimin leans in with the soft sleeve of his shirt and gently cleans his face off. he doesn’t look any surer, any less pulled apart, but he’s letting jimin take care of him. he’s letting jimin stay close to him, even when he’s hurting and that’s enough. 

“that was the very last part,” jimin says, shaking his head fondly. “that was just the last piece of this.” 

yoongi still seems confused, sits blank faced before jimin in a different way now, but still looking lost. jimin doesn’t mind explaining what he means. 

“think about us, hyung. all of us. we’ve been doing this for what? almost ten years, for you? while we’ve been together, how many of us have fallen for other people? we all made pretty disastrous attempts at dating, but how often did that work out for us?” 

“never.” yoongi says and then startles like his own voice scared him. jimin smiles at him. 

“not once, hyung. and then we all just stopped trying, eventually. did you think that was because we were all just that deadset on outsmarting dispatch?” 

yoongi sniffs again and frowns, thinking. 

“no, but. we still - you still …” 

“fucked other people?” jimin asks and when yoongi grimaces at him, he almost laughs. he reaches out to tuck yoongi’s hair behind his ear, instead. “even then, we all did it as neatly as we possibly could. no feelings, no mess. and it’s been - what? a year or two since any of us even bothered? why did you think that was, hyung?” 

yoongi doesn’t pause before he answers. 

“i knew why i stopped but that doesn’t mean the rest of you had the same reason,” he protests and jimin can’t really disagree with that logic, but - 

“so you think we all had separate personal reasons for not trying to find someone to date and then a fresh round of separate personal reasons for not wanting to hook up, either?” 

yoongi purses his lips, frown deepening. 

“i suppose if you look at it objectively …” he muses. “but wait,” he cuts a sharp look at jimin, “that would mean you knew years ago that we all had feelings for one another.” 

jimin doesn’t why that’s so shocking an idea to him. 

“yeah,” he agrees, because he had known. “but that doesn’t mean i knew we’d end up together. i only knew it was what we all wanted. i still had to wait to see if we’d get there. and how we did, if we did.” 

yoongi stares at him. 

“hyung,” jimin sighs, “we’ve always been different. everything about us has always been not like other groups, not like other people. it’s not like i knew right out of the gate that we were gonna end up doing … whatever this is, but i knew the way we felt about one another was more than friendship, more than just friendship and family.” that alone would have been more than enough for them, with the way they went about it, but - “once i started picking up on how obvious we all were about wanting to fuck one another, that’s when i knew this would probably fall out like this. if we did it right.” 

yoongi still seems to be having trouble either understanding or believing jimin and he’s squinting when he asks - 

“so as soon as we all started eye fucking taehyung you knew we were all gonna end up together?” 

and at this, jimin finally has to laugh. he really has no other choice. 

“taehyung is the simplest common denominator, the easiest across-the-board variable, maybe, but it didn’t start with him. the first part of all of this that actually surprised me was namjoon and hoseok kissing first. you know why?” 

“because you didn’t know for sure that this would become physical?” yoongi guesses and he’s not wrong, but he’s not exactly right, either. 

“no,” jimin says, “because i was genuinely amazed that you weren’t right there in the middle of that. they’re both dumb obvious about being in love with you.” yoongi makes a noise that’s halfway between a scoff and a gasp, his mouth opening but nothing besides that sound coming out. “for a while i even thought that your crazed rap line sex energy was going to ruin everything by making it all happen too fast and blow up in our faces. i used to worry that one or both of them would lose control and fuck this up by scamming you into fucking them before the others were ready to face what that might mean for all of us.” 

yoongi splutters, at this, but jimin isn’t done. 

“jin-hyung is what eased my mind about that, though. he’s been in love with you the longest, i think, but it was only when he started getting cotton mouth when you wore short sleeved shirts and smiling like a sap when he’d watch hobi and namjoon check you out - that was when i knew i could count on him to keep us on track.” 

yoongi is looking at jimin aghast, now. 

“what the fuck?” he asks, low and disbelieving. “how did - when did - how did i -” 

“how did you not notice? well it was kind of sweet, actually. usually what happened was that you’d be mooning at them and then you’d look away thinking you were about to get caught, which gave them the chance to moon at you without being seen. it worked perfectly, honestly.” 

“and you just … quietly observed?” yoongi asks. “just watched all this happen and what? waited patiently?” 

“what else was i supposed to do?” jimin asks, and if yoongi has any genuine suggestions, he’ll absolutely take that constructive criticism on board. this hasn’t been easy for him. he doesn’t think he did this perfectly or even well. they got here, though, and that means that he did enough. he did well. “should i have narrated our progress? ‘good morning bangtan household, today is wednesday, july 16th 2014 and currently our stats are as follows: rap line are definitely down to fuck, jin hyung seems to be taking an active interest in that and our maknae jeon jungkook has just recently caught the eye of park jimin, noted for having a strangely still undefined tie to taehyung’?” 

yoongi’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. 

“2014? you were into jungkook in 2014?” 

and there’s a note of judgement in his tone that jimin simply will not stand for. 

“can i remind you, hyung, what namjoon looked like during our debut? hobi was already hot, i’ll give you that, but namjoon? then? and you were already like deep, deep in it, too. people in glass knock-off snapbacks, hyung.” 

at this, yoongi can only blink. 

“i wasn’t in love with namjoon or hoseok back that far,” he says and jimin doesn’t know if he’s trying to convince himself or jimin. 

“if you say so, hyung,” jimin can agree, because he doesn’t actually agree but it doesn’t cost them anything to let yoongi figure that out on his own. “but what matters more is that they were both already in love with you. or at least halfway there, by then. both of them took a while to realize it. not like seokjin, he was hilarious when it happened for him.” having watched them all fall like dominoes, jimin can say with some authority that no one had taken the tumble quite as hard or fast as seokjin had for yoongi. “i don’t know how the rest of you didn’t notice. he looked at you like a groom walking up the aisle looks at his groom. and that was every day, for weeks. i remember you grabbed for his hand at one point and he had to turn his face away to hide how he’d started to cry. that hyung was adorable, so messed up over you.” 

jimin loses a couple seconds, thinking fondly back on how sweet it had been to watch, how much better it had made him feel to know he wasn’t the only one going through it. realizing he’d wanted them had been another complication, one that came later, but falling in love with them had been terrifying and incredible. falling for each one of them had been the best times in his life, even when they’d sometimes occurred against the backdrop of great difficulty for the group, in their lives. 

sometimes, on his sappier days, jimin lets himself believe that that part of all of this - the good times, the moments when it had only been about them and for them - had ended up becoming the cornerstones for what they’ve managed to build together, today. even when it had felt like disaster loomed around every corner, like disbanding could be the result of every comeback, they’d never let that fear change how they treated one another, how they let themselves love one another. and that’s what jimin’s most proud of. 

“seokjin hyung is … he’s in love with me? he has been in love with me?” it would almost be sweet, how lost yoongi sounds, if it didn’t make jimin’s heart ache instead. if this worked any other way, jimin would feel bad about talking to yoongi about this before seokjin does. if they were anyone other themselves, it wouldn’t be right for him to steal his hyung’s thunder. but it has to work like this precisely because it is them. seokjin and yoongi can talk about this themselves - sometime in the very near future if jimin has any say in it - but even then it’s not going to be a conversation that the rest of them wouldn’t have a place in. 

“you have to have known that, hyung,” jimin says gently, because it’s still entirely possible that yoongi got so in his own head about this that he hasn’t let himself properly register it yet, but he has to know it on some level. jimin saw the way they’d touched each other, lying in a tangle on namjoon’s bed. watching the two of them together like that had been the first time jimin had ever seen for himself just how different sex could be when feelings were involved. when you were in love. yoongi can’t have mistaken the way seokjin had kissed and handled him. yoongi can’t have lain in that and read it as anything other than total adoration. 

“i know he loves me,” yoongi says slowly. carefully. “i know that he’s in love with us.” he sets the words out like stepping stones across a broad but placid river. “i guess it would make sense that he …” 

jimin rubs his thumb across the line of yoongi’s knuckles and touching him just makes him want to touch him more, so he lifts his other hand to yoongi’s face and brushes the backs of his fingers over the slope of his cheekbone. 

“he is all the way fucked up over you, hyung,” jimin says softly, because the moment calls for hush. “you know the way he’s feral for jungkook? well he’s like the internalized, very carefully contained version of that for you. he’s like … awed by you, hyung. he loves us all, but you were the start of this for him, i’m pretty sure. you were first, for him. and that’s special, hyung.” 

at this, yoongi’s face clears. the doubt that had been sharpening his features and twisting up his mouth simply falls away. 

“that was you, for me,” he says quietly and his voice is low and rough now and what it says makes electricity shoot up through jimin’s spine. “maybe you didn’t notice because you were too busy watching the rest of us, but ... “ yoongi takes a breath. “i always loved all of you, right from the very, very beginning. the first day, probably. in under a minute, with jungkook. but i fell in love with you first.” 

and if anything about this conversation - this situation - is stupid, it’s jimin. because he hadn’t noticed that. he really hadn’t. he’d realized eventually that yoongi felt the same way about him that he did for the rest of them, but he hadn’t seen it when he’d been the one to start that, for yoongi. 

“ _hyung_ ,” jimin says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. nothing else could express what he’s trying to say. 

yoongi’s eyes don’t leave jimin’s face, but they fall from his eyes to his nose, to his mouth and chin. they flit quickly to his cheeks, lift to his eyelids, his eyebrows. he catalogues jimin’s face like he wants to remember what it looks like in this moment, or maybe just like he likes looking at it and jimin sits still and lets himself be looked at. he sits there before yoongi and lets himself be loved. 

“i think maybe that’s why i kind of lost it, with namjoon,” yoongi says, thoughtful. it’s not very often that he says things that his certainty isn’t already audible in, but jimin loves when yoongi talks like this - like he’s figuring out what he’s going to say as he says it. that he lets himself be that vulnerable with them still amazes jimin every time it happens. 

“you being the first one i loved didn’t make me think i deserved to be your first kiss or whatever. i honestly didn’t even think about it. but then …” the corner of yoongi’s mouth pinches. “then it seemed like you were struggling with all of this. and that wasn’t fun to see, obviously, but i liked that … that you came to me, even when you needed to get away from the rest of them, for a little while. i liked that you needed me, i think.” 

and that, jimin gets. he had sought yoongi out this week. he’s always looked for yoongi when he needed the time and space to think but didn’t want to be alone, needed still to be here, with them. “so when jungkook sent that dumb cute bingo chart to the chat and i saw the kissy face emoji in your and namjoon’s square, along with that godforsaken panting emoji because he might be the actual antichrist, i just went like … cold inside.” 

jimin tries to interrupt, opens his mouth and starts to speak, but yoongi shakes his head and keeps going. 

“and then i got mad and i wasn’t even mad at namjoon. i was mad at me, for being hurt by that. it’s so stupid, jimin-ah. it’s so incredibly, completely stupid. but i felt carved out by it.” yoongi’s face is pinched, his features all drawn tight and contained. but still, he goes on. he doesn’t let himself clam up. he keeps speaking. “and then i went through all of this and just kept finding ways to make myself seem left out, or like an after thought. and it was easy. it was easy to make it look like you all just didn’t want to leave me out.” 

miserably, that makes sense to jimin too. there were times when he’d tried to look at this and see himself as superfluous in it, too. there were times when he’d forced himself to see a set of them that didn’t include him at all, the rest of them together and happy that way. 

sometimes that had been because he didn’t always feel like he deserved to be part of this. 

sometimes it had been because he’d wondered if he could survive even the thought of that. 

“you know that’s not true, though,” jimin says very carefully, the words small and cautious, quiet and shaky like they’re set to crumble in an instant depending on yoongi’s response. 

yoongi’s eyes well up again and jimin wants to stop him when he lifts an elbow to cover his face, but he can’t because yoongi is grabbing for both of his hands with just one of his own, his hold on a clutch of jimin’s fingers tight and fierce. 

“i … i know i’m supposed to know that?” everything about that sentence hurts jimin, but the fact that it’s a question might actually kill him. yoongi stays covering his face, stays breathing brokenly against the inside of his own elbow, his words hitching around aborted, silenced sobs and jimin’s chest aches, everything in him hurts. 

“hyung,” jimin says desperately, “every single of us is in love with you. we’re all in love with each other, but a really big, really important part of that is each of us being completely in love with you. you’re not an add on.” with yoongi still gripping his hands like a lifeline, jimin can’t reach out for him, so he ducks down to lean his forehead against yoongi’s collarbone instead, his mouth pressed over yoongi’s heart. 

“you could never be an afterthought. you’re not a small part of this. you’re huge, to us. you’re ten feet tall, the way we see you. the way we love you.” jimin doesn’t mean that literally and he hopes yoongi won’t hear it that way either. he needs yoongi to know that he’s a pillar for them. that he makes the scope of this thing they’re doing vast, just for his presence in it. that the endless might of him both awes jimin and makes him feel so, so safe within it; loved and cared for and protected by yoongi. 

“you’re right in the thick of this with us. for us. you are beloved to us, hyung. to every single one of us.” 

there’s silence, then. jimin listens to yoongi’s rapid heartbeat and his quiet, miserable sniffles. he can hear yoongi trying to slow his own breathing but feels the way his chest heaves under him, feels how yoongi is shaking still. 

“part of me knows that. most days, i know that,” yoongi says finally, sounding helpless. sounding sorry. “but sometimes i don’t. sometimes i just can’t see it. maybe because i don’t know exactly what it looks like, yet.” jimin hums at that, understanding of it. “i don’t think i always know it about … this, yet.” 

jimin nods, his face still pressed to yoongi’s chest. he feels yoongi lift his arm from his face and he wants to cry all over again when yoongi lets it fall to sit loosely around jimin’s waist, his hand light on jimin’s back like he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch him like this. 

sitting up a little, jimin lifts his head to look at yoongi. his face is wet still, tear tracks shining on both of his cheeks. almost devoid of expression, he looks incredibly young. he looks lost. it’s been forever since jimin saw him like this and he can only hope that yoongi knows as well as he does that this is already progress - that him letting jimin see him like this and sit with him through this is already working to make this better for him, to make it easier for jimin to understand and start to help. 

“it’s the ‘this’ of it that’s tripping you up, isn’t it? you know that we love you, you can push yourself to accept sometimes that we’re in love with you. but you don’t know that we want you yet, huh?” 

after a beat, yoongi nods once. barely. 

jimin both gets it and really, truly doesn’t. he struggled with the exact same thing, in a slightly different way. he got in his own head about this too because sharing your whole lives, your whole heart with someone is scary at first and then scarily easy to get used to. but sex is something else. sex like this is almost impossible to even imagine, at first. for jimin, he’d worried that a change this big might be too much for him to handle, could present a shift so huge that he’d lose any and all ground he’d already covered and find himself back in a place where one wrong move could end everything and not just for him. and even after namjoon had talked him down from that hypothetical ledge, the thought of touching them had become another knot for him to work through. 

for jimin, his insecurity had meant that he’d been afraid, at first, to be vulnerable with them in a brand new way because he’s gotten used to knowing and being known by them. it was scary to think about starting something from scratch, even with them, maybe especially with them, because he was already in love with them and that made it too easy for him to manifest pressure for himself. 

for yoongi, it seems like his insecurity - because they all have it, it just presents in different ways, at different times, for different reasons - doesn’t make him doubt his part in this, but theirs. 

and that’s easy enough for jimin to understand. it makes sense because yoongi’s thought process has always been easy for jimin to follow. not even taehyung makes as much sense to jimin as yoongi always has, or as namjoon eventually came to. 

but when he takes himself out of yoongi’s clear flow of thoughts, when he looks at it from the outside alone, he also can’t understand it at all. 

“hyung,” he says gently, carefully lifting yoongi’s arm and encouraging him to wrap both of his arms around jimin, like this, “i was there when you and seokjin were going at it on namjoon’s bed, remember?” yoongi flushes slightly, his gazing dropping down and away from jimin but his hands joined at jimin’s back, now, his hold surer than it had been at first. “didn’t hyung touch you like he wanted you? didn’t he show you how much he did?” 

yoongi licks at his bottom lip and clears his throat before he speaks, coughs quietly like something is trying to block the path of his voice, his words. 

“he was caught up in the moment. so was i - i was too. it’s -” his eyebrows lower and furrow. “it’s new, still. it’s a novelty. that doesn’t mean that he means …” he trails off, not wanting to finish that sentence or not knowing how to. 

jimin lifts a hand to yoongi’s face, cups the warm jut of his jaw in his palm. 

“is that what this is going to take, hyung? is that how we help you figure this out? when we keep touching you exactly like that, will you believe it then, do you think?” 

yoongi’s eyebrows furrow further and jimin can’t help it, he brushes the pad of his thumb up under yoongi’s bottom lip. yoongi sucks his lip into his mouth and inhales sharply, his lip reappearing, shining wetly now and jimin does not for one second try to pretend he isn’t looking, does absolutely nothing to hide his hunger. 

“i think …” his voice shakes, his throat working around a hard swallow. “i think that would help,” he whispers and jimin would prefer there to be more ceremony or fanfare to this, he really would, but he’s about to lean in and kiss the ever loving fuck out of yoongi when a knock on the door interrupts them. 

jimin and yoongi both go still. 

“can i … do you want me to get that?” jimin asks, because they’ve made some progress, but maybe not enough. they’ve figured some things out and maybe whoever is at the door can help with what they’ve started, but maybe yoongi isn’t ready for that yet. 

yoongi nods, though, and when jimin crosses the floor and opens the door to seokjin, he’s convinced yet again that this is fate. it has to be. there’s simply no other explanation for moments like this. 

it’s almost unbearably sweet, watching yoongi with seokjin like this. jimin can see how hard he’s trying to strip away any and all of his suspicions, how determined he is to try and see only what seokjin is showing him, the face value of what his brain wants to try and contradict. 

yoongi is a blushing, spluttering mess when seokjin tells him sincerely how much he loves him and jimin couldn’t mean it more when he tells seokjin he loves him, because even though he can’t know exactly what they’d just decided yoongi needed, he’s here and providing it already. 

“you’re so cute,” jimin tells yoongi, once seokjin has gone back to taehyung and jimin has hug tackled yoongi down onto his own bed. “look at you, blushing so sweetly because your hyung is in love with you. it’s no wonder five whole other people just fell right at your feet, too.” 

yoongi tries to roll over and hide his face in the covers, but jimin doesn’t let him. he sits on yoongi’s stomach and tightens his knees around his ribs, traps his hands down against the sheets with his own. 

“don’t get shy on me now, hyung,” jimin teases, “you’re adorable like this. such a lovely hyung, to try so hard to let us love you.” 

at this, yoongi huffs roughly. 

“‘s not hard to let you. it’s hard to ...” 

“it’s hard to let yourself trust it?” jimin knows. he isn’t surprised when yoongi nods, seemingly grateful to jimin for finishing his sentence, for completing his thought. “all you have to do is keep trying, hyung,” jimin promises him. he lets go of yoongi’s hands to lean down, his elbows catching his weight on either side of yoongi’s head. “just keep trying and let us do the rest. let us show you.” 

there’s barely a beat, after jimin presses his lips to yoongi’s, before yoongi’s hands are moving low on jimin’s back, his fingers pushing up under the hem of his shirt when jimin’s mouth opens against his. 

yoongi’s hands move instantly, seamlessly to make themselves intimately acquainted with the line of jimin’s spine, the span of his shoulderblades. it seems fitting to jimin, that yoongi seems to have decided that what his brain can’t quite handle yet, he can entrust to his hands in the mean time. he’s always been a very hands-on learner, talented and endlessly capable in a hundred different ways with anything he can hold and look at, and jimin is honoured to be one such thing, now. jimin kisses him through it all, doesn’t try to push or control it but meets yoongi in the middle, sits astride him and gives him his mouth, gives him his body to learn anew. 

“you’re gorgeous like this. i love getting to see you like this. getting to touch you this way,” yoongi tells him in a hushed whisper and it makes jimin huff because he’s supposed to be taking care of yoongi right now, he’s the one who needs to be reassuring, here. but that’s one of the many threads of the beauty of this; they’re always taking care of one another, always doing their best for each other. 

when jimin dips down to kiss yoongi again, just a peck, a placeholder, yoongi sighs contentedly, adding to this bookmark they’re creating together. 

“i think even when we’re all in this, even when we’ve gotten used to it, i’ll still want to touch you like this all the time. i think i’ll always want to have you this way,” yoongi says quietly, when jimin has rolled off him to lie on his back beside him. 

“you’ll always have me like this, hyung,” jimin promises him. “just like this, and however else you want me, too.” 

they lie together in silence, their hands joined and their thoughts probably linked as well. all of this is a lot, but they’re getting there. they’re working past the bumps in the road and it’s getting easier all the time because they only ever make it clearer, see sooner that all of them want the same thing, are working toward the same goal. that’s always been the case for them, even when the goal was different. even before they knew how high they could aim; how far they could dare to dream. 

“i think there’s - there’s something else that could help,” yoongi says after a while, and jimin rolls easily up onto his side to look down at him, his attention caught immediately, raptly. “do you think … would namjoon come, do you think? if i asked?” 

jimin smiles at him, fond and only slightly exasperated. 

“hyung wants his baby, huh?” he asks, sidestepping the fact that namjoon would do literally anything for yoongi - would do anything for any of them, but routinely achieves the impossible, for yoongi. with yoongi. “you get ready for bed,” he says, sitting up and getting to his feet. “i’ll go get him for you.” 

_/_/_/

taking a quick detour, taking a risk, jimin stops at another door before he goes to namjoon’s. 

jungkook is asleep already, when jimin peeks his head inside his room. he walks quietly to the bed, already marvelling at the low, lovely blue light that jungkook’s room is bathed in even before he gets to the bedside and sees what jungkook’s face looks like, peaceful in sleep and ethereal in this lighting, this shade. he looks like an angel. like something other-worldly and untouchable and jimin feels like he’s tempting fate when he reaches out to brush jungkook’s hair out of his face, but that’s exactly what they’re doing right now. they’re reaching out for what’s finally within their grasp. they’re taking the fate they’ve worked for all these years to realize into their own hands, at long last. 

when jimin’s fingertips brush the shell of jungkook’s ear, his eyelashes flutter.

“hyung?” he mumbles, eyes still closed. “oh,” he says when he looks up, smiling dopily when he blinks to make the shape of jimin make sense to his eyes. “hi, hyung.” 

“hi baby,” jimin says, getting to his knees to get closer. jungkook rolls over, turns to face jimin but closes his eyes again, still smiling faintly. “hyung loves you, you know that don’t you?” jimin asks, low enough that jungkook might not hear, quiet enough for him to not have to answer. 

“know that,” jungkook says, already falling back asleep. “love you too, hyung. love you s’much,” he says and then his breathing starts to slow again, his face smoothing back out in sleep. 

jimin presses a careful kiss to his forehead and then he quietly closes jungkook’s bedroom door again and goes to find what he’d come looking for. 

_/_/_/

but once again, he finds himself waylaid. he means to go to namjoon’s room, but can’t even pretend not to know why he finds himself standing in front of hoseok’s bedroom door instead. 

when he knocks quietly and peeks his head inside, hoseok is standing in the doorway to his bathroom, his phone in one hand and his toothbrush in his mouth. he looks surprised to see jimin, had probably assumed he was asleep already because he’s been so quiet in the group chat this evening. a blob of toothpaste drips down his chin and lands on his bare chest and he frowns and throws his phone onto his bed, holds up a finger to jimin as if to say ‘wait one sec,’ and then disappears back into his bathroom. 

the thing is though, jimin feels like he doesn’t have a second, doesn’t have any patience left with which to try and wait. so he stops trying to fool himself into believing otherwise. 

he follows hoseok into the bathroom and hoseok looks up at him, his eyes meeting jimin’s in the mirror when he lifts his head from where he’d been rinsing his mouth out under the faucet. his mouth is red and wet and jimin doesn’t think, can’t think, because he’d only meant to come and check on hoseok, to tuck him in maybe, but seeing him awake - seeing him like this - makes a wave of want rise in him so fast that he can’t steady himself against it, finds himself swept under it before he can even think of doing so. 

“jimin - what? is something -” hoseok is speaking as he turns to face jimin but his mouth snaps shut when jimin gets a hand around his bicep and pushes him back against the sink. he peers into jimin’s face like he’s waiting for something to appear on it, but lets jimin manhandle him, lets him get him leaning back on the bathroom counter with his weight on his hands, his chest and shoulders pushed forward so jimin can touch him everywhere. jimin wants to touch him everywhere. he drags his palms down over hoseok’s pecs, lets his fingernails scratch lightly over his ribs, his abs. he holds hoseok’s hips in both of his hands, his thumbs digging in where bone meets muscle and he can’t look hoseok in the face, can’t lift his head to meet his eyes because it’s abruptly terrifying, to want someone this much. it’s scary as fuck to realize how close he is to finally having him. 

and jimin understands yoongi then, understands the part of this that he’s battling through better than he had before. because jimin has fought every single day of being in this group. he’s fought to be who other people wanted him to be, he’s fought to find and kill that urge to people please in himself. he’s been fighting for a couple years now to tear down the last remaining walls he hides behind, to break out of and soundly demolish the places he goes within himself when he can’t bear to let the others see him be weak or vulnerable or unequipped; somehow, in some way unable. he has taught himself to show them everything he wants to share with them; every part of himself that he loves or likes or has just discovered or doesn’t understand or needs their help to change. 

he came to them a bristling, prickly thing and started his journey as a trainee by turning that inward too, making himself small and pushing everyone and everything as far away from him as he could, because he was terrified that someone would get too close and see the reality of him - would find that he was nothing but a hollow shell, smokescreens and mirrors hiding the total lack of anything or anyone that he’d let himself be reduced to, back then. 

and now there are days when he feels infinite. when there is so much of him - so much that he wants, so much that he’s determined to do, so much of himself that he loves - that sometimes he trips over his words, trips over his feet when he has to hunt someone down and share it with them as quickly as he can, ideas and hopes and plans tripping off his tongue quicker than their ears can catch them. 

jimin has blossomed, with them. because of them, and the means of that had been and still is sharing how he feels with them. being honest with himself and sharing the truth, the reality of him with them. 

truth has been jimin’s singular constant, with them. 

and he still can’t bring himself to look at hoseok now, when the magnitude of his feelings for him feel like they dwarf him, feel like they’re being broadcast from every single cell of his body at once. he loves hoseok. he’s in love with hoseok. he knows hoseok loves him back. and it still scares him to show him this. 

so for the rest of them ... 

it’s no wonder, jimin thinks. it’s no wonder at all that they haven’t figured out how to show yoongi the sum of how they feel about him, yet. it was a forgone conclusion that yoongi would find ways to see something else entirely, when the barest hint of hesitation would satisfy the suspicion his insecurity has sewn all through him. 

and it’s realizing that that makes jimin braver than he’s ever needed to be before; braver than he thought he could be. 

“if this wasn’t the way it is,” he says to hoseok’s sternum, “if it wasn’t all of us,” he says to hoseok’s collarbones and throat and chin, “if it was only ever going to be you and me,” his voice becomes a whisper when his eyes lift to meet hoseok’s kind, patient gaze, “that wouldn’t change how i feel about you.” 

hoseok presses his lips together and then his tongue peeks out to wet them and jimin knows he’s about to speak, knows he has to get there first. he has to say this for the first time right now, already knowing that he’s going to repeat some version of it five more times after this. 

“you’re more than enough for me. i don’t just love you because you’re part of this, i don’t just love you as a piece of it. i love you with everything there is inside of me to love with, hyung. if it was just you and me, i’d love you exactly the way i love you now. i could be happy forever, with you,” jimin says and he feels like something inside of him swells, like new life is breathed into a part of him that he hadn’t known existed until right now. 

it feels like the crack that yoongi’s uncertainty slashed through his heart has been sealed shut; healed over in an instant. in the single second it takes for jimin to see what he has said mirrored and echoed in hoseok’s eyes, in the hand he bands around jimin’s wrist, in the soft exhale that makes jimin shiver. 

when hoseok finally opens his mouth, it’s not to speak. 

he dips his head to brush his nose in against jimin’s and jimin is smiling when hoseok presses in to kiss him. he kisses jimin gently, a barely there touch of his lips to jimin’s that he contradicts perfectly with his hand gone tight around jimin’s wrist, his other arm locked hard around jimin’s waist, gathering jimin to him and keeping him there, like he just now found him and is unwilling to let him escape. 

“you’ve got a lot to teach me, a lot you could teach all of us, i think,” hoseok says when they break apart and pride wells up in jimin at the thought that there is a way - another way - for him to lead them. “will you? can you show us how to be like this with one another? the way you are with us?” 

“i’ll show you anything you want to see, hyung,” jimin says and when hoseok leers at him a little, his smile all teeth for a second, it’s a deflection that jimin easily recognizes. because he’s good at this. because he knows them and he has taught himself how to let them know him. 

“i’m gonna love you forever, park jimin,” hoseok tells him, folding both his arms around jimin’s waist and hugging him tightly, his cheek pressed to jimin’s. “i’m gonna be so very gross and obnoxious about how in love i am,” he says and they both hear how that’s not only limited to his love for jimin. 

and just like that, hoseok invites jimin to start a brand new adventure with him, with all of them, alongside the one they’re already on. 

_/_/_/

oddly, namjoon doesn’t seem at all surprised by the intrusion when jimin knocks lightly on his door. he’s in his sleep clothes, but he’s got his glasses on and his bed is still made, when jimin peeks up over his shoulder to check. 

“are you busy? i was with yoongi hyung just now and he’s asking for you,” jimin says, not bothering to dress it up or explain any further because - 

“okay, let’s go,” namjoon says, stepping out and instantly falling into step next to jimin. “he’s okay, right? he messaged me about our fight earlier but i know there was more to it than me, did he talk to you?” 

it’s a tiny detail, but hearing namjoon call what had happened ‘their’ fight when he’d had no real part in it according to yoongi makes jimin’s heart swell. it’s so quintessentially namjoon. so totally typical for their leader, who is their leader because of this selfless, responsible streak that’s struck bright through him and not the other way around. 

“he’s good, hyung. he just wanted to see you. we talked some and he’s figuring it out but he’s done enough hard work for today. he just wants to cuddle now, i think. just wants you close.” 

it doesn’t make jimin feel like he’s lesser somehow, or not enough. it just feels like he gave yoongi something he needed, something maybe only he could have provided then, and now yoongi needs something else, something that they’re all glad namjoon can give him. 

namjoon’s cheeks are pink, when jimin chances a glance at him. he kind of wants to push him against a wall and scale him like a tree. he looks at namjoon with his hot professor glasses on but his hands pushed into the pockets of his shorts, the shyness that speaks to and he wants - as usual - to wrap himself around namjoon like climbing ivy. 

“you and yoongi hyung are cute together. so sweet for each other,” jimin says and when namjoon looks at him like he doesn’t disagree but also doesn’t quite see his point, he adds, “you should keep showing hyung how you feel about him. don’t try to hide it anymore. not any of it.” namjoon hasn’t been trying all that hard to keep that kind of secret lately, none of them have, but he knows that namjoon will read what he’s writing between the lines. he knows namjoon will hear what jimin is asking for, for their hyung, because namjoon always understands what jimin is trying to say, sometimes even when jimin doesn’t. 

“okay. i’ll do that. thank you for reminding me,” namjoon agrees easily and when they get to yoongi’s closed door, he guides jimin up against it with gentle hands. he kisses him slowly, almost clumsy for how he’s trying so hard to be careful, to hold himself in check. “thank you for being there for him,” he says and jimin lifts his hands to namjoon’s shoulders, to the warm curve of his neck and then the back of his head, his fingers getting lost in the soft thicket of his hair. 

“i love him. i love you,” jimin says simply, and lifts his face into it when namjoon kisses that same sentiment to his lips. 

when they let themselves in, yoongi is already in bed, curled up in a ball but facing them, looking instantly to them. 

namjoon goes straight to him, paws at the blankets to get them lifted up out of his way and then slides right in next to yoongi, gathers him up in his arms. he whispers something that jimin can’t hear but he sees the shy smile yoongi gives him response, sees how yoongi pushes him away just so he can straighten himself out and then pull namjoon right back in, no space at all between them, now. 

jimin watches for a moment, feels privileged to get to see them together like this, still. always will, he’s pretty sure. 

“okay, everybody’s good, right?” he asks, wanting to be certain before he leaves them to it. 

that’s the plan, at least, until namjoon looks back over his shoulder at him in confusion and yoongi stretches his arms out behind namjoon’s back, reaches for him with grabby hands even when he’s already got namjoon in his bed, in his arms. 

“want both my babies,” yoongi says and it’s the closest to aegyo jimin has ever, ever heard him willingly get. he doesn’t know how he manages to make it to the bed, when he’s a human puddle now, but somehow he does. he walks around the other side of it and climbs in next to yoongi, gets him cushioned between himself and namjoon. 

“there. happy now?” jimin asks, tucking his face against the back of yoongi’s neck and laying his hand across yoongi’s hip, closing his eyes when namjoon stretches to get his arms around the both of them. 

“mhmm,” yoongi hums, pushing one leg back to hook his foot around jimin’s ankle. “m’happy now.” 

they’re too close; they’re going to wake up in an hour sweaty and way too hot, but that’s not a problem they need to solve right now. 

yoongi needs this, and jimin finds, lying tangled up with the two of them, that maybe he did, too. 

( 

when they do wake up a while later, namjoon twisting away to grab for the water glass on yoongi’s bedside table, he passes it to yoongi, who passes it on to jimin, once he’s had his fill. jimin drinks too and then turns away to put the glass on the table next to his side of the bed. before he can turn back, yoongi’s arms are encircling his waist, namjoon’s arm stretched across him so he can rest his hand on jimin’s side. he smiles and reaches for namjoon’s hand, lifts it to his mouth and kisses his knuckles before he returns it to where it was and falls instantly, easily back asleep. 

) 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

the sound and sensation of paper crinkling wakes jimin. 

when he opens his eyes, he realizes that this is because he has rolled over in his sleep and somehow managed to get a post-it note stuck to his face. 

‘me and hobi have gone to work, didn’t want to wake you. see you later. love you. x yoongi’ it reads, and jimin carefully smoothes it out, traces his fingers over the words and then puts it on the bedside table to keep it safe. he’s going to glue it into his journal later and he’s not even a little bit embarrassed about that. 

when he lies back down again, the same rustle that had woken him alerts him to the fact that there’s another note. this one is stuck in his hair. 

‘i’m not gone to work but i had something to go do. love you, jimin. xoxo namu’ this one says, and jimin is overcome with delight, has to curl his own arms around himself and rock side to side in the sheets because holy hell he picked the best people to fall in love with and having them love him back makes him feel vaguely invincible, seriously infinite. 

and then taehyung appears in the open doorway and somehow just the sight of him makes jimin’s life instantly better; still in an instant takes jimin’s breath away, even after all this time. 

“hey, good morning,” taehyung says, already smiling maybe just because jimin is. he doesn’t make a move to come in, so jimin sits up to see him better. “you wanna see something beautiful?” 

jimin tilts his head. 

“i’m already looking at something beautiful,” he says and taehyung giggles, brings his hand up in front of his mouth to try and hide his grin. 

“that’s sweet, but i’m pretty sure you’re gonna wanna see this,” taehyung insists, so jimin gets up and goes to him, lets taehyung take his hand and lead him away. 

when they stop in front of jungkook’s bedroom door, jimin turns to taehyung, perplexed. it’s not that he doesn’t think jungkook is beautiful, because duh, he has seen jeon jungkook, but he saw him less than twelve hours ago. he’s pretty sure nothing about jungkook can have changed that significantly since then. 

he is, he finds, spectacularly wrong. 

because when taehyung knocks on the door, it’s not jungkook who responds. 

“yeah?” namjoon calls, sounding exactly the way he does when you ask him something from the doorway of his studio; like he’s completely focused on something else and answered you out of nothing more than pure reflex, just a base instinct to respond to sound with sound even though he has no idea what you’ve said to him or what he may have agreed to. 

“i’m back,” taehyung calls in response and again, jimin is confused. taehyung was here already? and left? to … come fetch jimin? “jimin is here too, is that okay?” 

“hyung! come in hyungs, come here. please. hyungs. jimin- _ah_ ” comes jungkook’s voice then, the last syllable a shout of something other than sheer banmal brattiness, jimin hopes. he’s not wrong about this, but when taehyung pushes the door open he sees instantly just how very wrong he had been about jungkook being unchanged from when he’d last seen him. 

last night, jungkook was silent and still, placid in sleep. he was gorgeous like that and jimin had even thought to himself then that it was the most beautiful he’d ever seen jungkook be, the best he’d ever looked to jimin, who didn’t know how to look at him and not be bowled over by him, dragged instantly under by the tidal wave of his love for him. 

this jungkook is the polar opposite. and he is somehow - though jimin can’t even begin to understand or fathom it - even more beautiful, now. 

namjoon is lying on jungkook’s bed, propped up against his pillows. he has one arm banded high around jungkook’s chest, holding him tight with jungkook’s back pressed to namjoon’s front. 

jungkook is completely naked, but namjoon is still dressed, though his sleep shorts and tshirt look distinctly more rumpled than they’d been when he’d climbed into bed with jimin and yoongi last night, the neck line stretched out and torn it looks like, falling away to reveal a set of livid looking marks on the side of his throat. and the mystery of those is pretty quickly solved when jungkook reaches back behind himself, grabs for the headboard behind namjoon’s head so he can pull himself up and back to open his mouth against namjoon’s skin, his lips pulled back from his teeth in something like a snarl. 

“yah! careful! be gentle with your hyung,” seokjin scolds, and his words are totally at odds with the way he has jungkook’s leg pushed up almost far enough to touch namjoon’s arm around jungkook’s chest, jungkook’s other leg thrown up over seokjin’s shoulder to make space for seokjin between them, the snap of his hips as he fucks jungkook very nearly brutal, both in speed and force. 

“s’fine,” namjoon says, dipping his head to push a hard, wet kiss to jungkook’s mouth and then lifting his chin to let him back at his neck, “he doesn’t have to be gentle. he can do whatever he wants with me.” 

and whether it’s namjoon’s words or the way seokjin lifts jungkook’s hips completely off the bed to hold him where he wants and grind into him, his ass clenching with how determined he is to get as deep in jungkook as he possibly can, jimin can’t really tell, but jungkook’s mouth falls wide open around a sound that you might consider inhuman, if you hadn’t heard already heard jungkook get fucked like, a lot, this week. the way jimin has. 

jimin stands stock still, stunned. taehyung, standing next to him, keeps glancing back and forth between what’s happening on the bed and jimin’s face, intent on not missing one second of jimin’s reaction, it seems. 

taehyung’s grin is visible to jimin even only in his peripheral vision, because he can’t turn to look at him, he can’t - he finds - drag his eyes away from jungkook. he doesn’t remember deciding to move, but he notices that he is. he’s crossing the room, still staring, completely enraptured, and then he’s standing next to the bed, he’s climbing up onto it to get to his knees next to jungkook. 

when jungkook’s eyes lift to his, it’s jungkook that gasps. 

“hyung,” he outright sobs and jimin can’t tell if he starts to tear up because jimin reaches out to take his face in his hands, or if it’s that jimin reaches out instinctively when he sees jungkook’s eyes start to shine. 

“hi baby,” jimin says, just like he’d said last night. because whether he’s drooling on himself and mumbling nonsense in his sleep or summarily beating all of them at some game in turn or waking up hours before their call time to cycle to the gym or doting on them even though they’re older than him or climbing between two of his hyungs to gripe and whine for what he wants, jungkook is still jimin’s baby. “feel good? are joonie-hyung and jin-hyung making you feel nice?” 

jungkook’s eyes slip shut when namjoon’s free hand starts to drift down his chest, rubbing harshly at his nipples with his fingertips and then scoring bright, stinging lines down over jungkook’s abs with his fingernails. jungkook nods in response to jimin’s question and tucks his bottom lip up between his teeth, grips hard at namjoon’s forearm. 

“‘t’s so good. i - fuck - i love this, hyung,” he seems to fight to say. 

the loud, lewd noises seokjin is punctuating with hard, muffled thumps of his hips against jungkook’s ass slow, and when jimin glances down at him, taehyung is behind him, his gorgeous tanned hands travelling slowly up and down the sides of seokjin’s thighs. seokjin is still pushing into jungkook, slower and lazy now, but his focus is temporarily trained on craning his neck to one side, taehyung leaning in to kiss him open-mouthed and dirty. 

when jimin looks back at jungkook, both he and namjoon are watching seokjin and taehyung, twin expressions of lust blown wonder in their eyes. 

bizarrely, it’s this that really gets to jimin. looking at namjoon and jungkook share a single expression while they stare in awe at how easily taehyung makes seokjin falter, makes him stutter and tremble, is what makes jimin reach a brand new level of overwhelmed. 

he is overwhelming, wholly in love with these men. 

and even though they’re not here, might not be present in the room, hoseok and yoongi stay front and center in this for jimin. just picturing their faces, thinking about how it makes him feel when hoseok comes to wake him up and lets himself be the first thing jimin sees in the morning, remembering falling asleep in yoongi’s arms only last night, jimin feels free. 

it feels like after falling for so long, tripping and dropping and plummeting in ways that were tiny and jarring, scary and exhilarating and like a never-ending, joyful freefall into oblivion, jimin has landed. he has landed caught and cushioned by something so much bigger than himself, something strong enough to easily take not only his weight, but the weight of all of them, tossed out around him, spread out next to him, none of them out of reach. finally. at last. it feels like lying out in the sun in the shade of a tree with nothing to do and no worries to distract him. it feels like everywhere goes jimin goes from here, from now, he’ll walk always on flower petals. it feels like total weightlessness, like all the ties and complications that bind their lives can lift him up instead of holding him down, if he gets to feel this way, with them. if he gets to love them and know what it means to be loved by them. 

a hand, big and warm on jimin’s face, startles him out of his reverie. 

maybe he made some noise from the depths of his joy or maybe it’s loud enough without him making a sound at all, because they’re all looking at him, now. taehyung has his chin propped up over seokjin’s shoulder and his hands are on jungkook’s thighs now, but jungkook doesn’t seem to notice because he’s looking at jimin like he’s seeing him for the very first time. it’s namjoon’s hand on jimin’s face, his palm a little rough and warm. seokjin is frowning slightly at the space between them like it offends him that jimin is too far away to touch. 

“i didn’t know it would be like this,” jimin says, hushed in the new silence of the room. “i didn’t know you could be this happy,” he says and then the silence seems to expand around them, somehow, seems to sweep out into the whole world and make everything - for a moment - very bright and entirely, deafeningly silent. 

namjoon’s hand, on the back of jimin’s neck now, draws him in, tugs him gently down, but it’s jungkook that jimin’s lips meet. he kisses jungkook high on the bridge of his nose and then on both of his cheeks. he pushes jungkook’s hair back out of his face so he can kiss his forehead and then he lifts his head and presses his mouth to namjoon’s. 

jungkook whines and namjoon laughs softly and jimin doesn’t do anything except hold himself up over the two of them, his weight on both of his hands and his tongue in namjoon’s mouth, the kiss as messy and as loud as he can make it. when he pulls back, namjoon looks a little bit stunned and jungkook’s face is twisted bitterly. 

when jimin pointedly thumbs spit that could well be either his own or namjoon’s but definitely is not jungkook’s from the cusp of his top lip, jungkook bares his teeth at him. 

jimin thinks it’s oddly inverted, how jungkook is so caught up in being mad at him that he forgets to adopt his usual tactic of begging and pleading to tempt jimin into going back on his word, because actually jungkook being like this makes it much more difficult for jimin to keep his hands off him. wanting it so much is the only thing keeping jimin from doing it, which - again - is perfectly perverse. it’s exactly how this has always been for jimin, with jungkook. 

“hyung,” jungkook grits out and jimin only raises an eyebrow, because for once that tone of voice isn’t being directed at him. because jungkook is looking at jimin, but he’s reaching to grab for the leg he’s lifting off seokjin’s shoulder, holding it back against his own chest just like seokjin still has the other pressed. “jin-hyung, please.” with a final, cutting glare, jungkook looks away from jimin, looks to seokjin instead. it makes jimin’s blood burn, the way jungkook’s face gets soft for a second and then sets, hard. “jimin-hyung is tormenting me,” he says, his eyes blazing but his mouth puckered up in a pout. “fuck it better, hyung? please?” 

the silence that follows that is entirely different to the one that had gone before. this time, jungkook is waiting to see if he’ll get what he wants - because again, sometimes it’s like he actually forgets who he is, or more accurately who he is to them - and the rest of them, jimin is confident, are quietly, solemnly contemplating the face of their own doom as it lies before them, bottom lip wobbling now. 

“jesus christ,” seokjin says, voice faint, and then taehyung is slapping him audibly across the ass and for whichever or whatever combination of motivating factors at play here, seokjin does as he’s been asked. 

namjoon pushes jungkook off him, just slightly to the side, just enough that he can get both hands on jungkook’s face to turn him to face namjoon, to kiss him so hard that it honestly doesn’t look like either of them are breathing. jungkook’s eyelashes flutter, his moan a hum of absolute contentment that ticks up into shocked delight when seokjin holds his cheeks apart and shoves into him, hard and fast. 

with jungkook settled and content, seokjin looking like he might refuse to leave this bed until jungkook physically cannot handle any further pleasure and namjoon swearing low into the side of jungkook’s face, jimin is able to climb off the bed and reel taehyung in by the hand he holds out to him, closing the door softly behind them when they leave. 

outside jungkook’s bedroom door, jimin turns his face into taehyung’s chest and closes his eyes, breathes slowly, purposefully in and then out. in and then back out again. 

“it’s a lot, isn’t it?” taehyung hums, his arms coming up around jimin’s waist, one hand rubbing soothingly up his spine. 

from anyone else, jimin would think they meant this whole thing. the sum of it. what they’re doing and what it’s like now that they’re finally all in it together. 

but because he’s taehyung and jimin is jimin and together they are how they’ve always been, even before any of this was barely a seedling of hope, not yet so much as a shot in the dark, jimin doesn’t make that mistake. 

“i want to do unspeakable things to that boy,” jimin moans weakly, almost whining himself, because jungkook makes him crazy. they all make him feel overwhelmed and almost frenzied about the prospect of getting his hands on them, but jungkook makes that same feeling seem somehow that much more urgent. very painfully pressing. holding back like this makes it so much worse, which in turn, makes it all the better. 

“i would like to see that,” is all taehyung says, his smile clear in his voice. 

they stay like that together, just holding one another, taehyung tilting his head in alongside jimin’s and then rocking him slowly in his arms. 

right here, just like this, is home to jimin. it always has been, right from the very beginning. it’s a kind of home jimin hadn’t known before taehyung. it’s a comfort he doesn’t ever want to know without taehyung. 

“you still want to do some unspeakable things to me first, though, right?” taehyung asks quietly after a minute and jimin laughs at him. he twists back to suck a wet, biting kiss to the hinge of taehyung’s jaw. 

“oh you’re definitely not off the hook,” he promises, noting with interest the way taehyung goes completely still when he feels jimin’s teeth against his skin. “i’ve got plans for you, my love.” 

taehyung shivers against him, a broken note of sound falling out of his mouth and this time when jimin presses his mouth to taehyung’s skin, he doesn’t bother trying to conceal his intentions or soften the sentiment with his lips or tongue. 

this time when jimin presses close to taehyung, his nose dragging slowly up the side of taehyung’s neck and setting a tremble rolling in its wake, his kiss is all teeth. 

by the time jimin has taehyung backed up against a wall, his fingertips scrabbling at the plaster for purchase, for support, he’s clearly losing patience with this; with jimin maybe, but with himself maybe even more. 

“so listen, what if we just said fuck whatever else we’re supposed to do today,” he offers, jimin’s hips pinning his to wall, his feet kicked apart so jimin can stand between them and maul his throat and collarbones. 

jimin laughs against his skin, laughs again and cruelly now when the huff of air against the marks he’s left on taehyung’s skin makes him whimper pitifully. he’s hard against jimin and jimin is barely any better off, but it’s embarrassing that taehyung has gotten worked up this quickly considering all the sex he’s been having this week. jimin is embarrassed for him, honestly. 

“well,” jimin muses, “we absolutely can’t. but also?” he leans in and sucks hard at an already beautifully blooming bruise, flicks his fingers lightly against taehyung’s knuckles as a reminder of his order not to touch. “where’s the fun in that, tae? because it’s going to be fun for me to see you try to cover all this up,” he noses at a particularly nice spot at the base of taehyung’s throat, broken blood vessels swelling under his skin in a ring perfectly shaped to the set of jimin’s bite radius. “and knowing how much it’s going to kill you have to wait until tonight to touch me?” where jungkook might snap his teeth or growl, taehyung slumps back against the wall. his throat works around a swallow but he doesn’t complain. he’s resigned to his fate, if jimin’s the one doling it out. he’s up for anything, if it’s jimin that’s holding the reins. “nothing’s as much fun as seeing you squirm, babe.” 

he lets his hands fall to taehyung’s hips and holds him still, keeps him where he wants him when he grinds in and up, twisting his hips against him. 

when taehyung’s only response is to bite at the inside of cheek and stare at jimin, wide eyed, jimin thinks that today really and truly couldn’t possibly get any better. 

and then comes the very audible, very timely reminder that about ten feet away, jungkook is working his somewhat jimin-specific frustrations off between namjoon and seokjin. 

and this is succinctly followed up by the cheery chime of their front door lock, yoongi and hoseok appearing at the top of the corridor a few seconds later and neither of them missing a beat when they see the comprising position jimin has taehyung held in, yoongi only tilting his head at the sound of jungkook somehow having found the opportunity to get in it yet again. 

“hi,” hoseok says, stepping up next to them and pressing a kiss to jimin and taehyung’s cheeks in turn. “how are we today?” 

yoongi, apparently on the scent of a dongsaeng in need, or maybe just eager to let himself be loved a little more, goes to knock on jungkook’s door. when he peeks his head in, it’s namjoon and seokjin who call out for him in chorus. 

“we’re good,” jimin tells hoseok, stepping back from taehyung and pulling him forward, away from the wall. he takes his hand and reaches for hoseok’s with his other hand, intent on walking them both back to their bedrooms so they can all get ready for the schedule they have in a while. 

“we’re great today, hyung. today is a going to be a wonderful one, i think.” 

hoseok smiles at him and taehyung tries to too but looks too flushed, still too ruffled to really commit to it. 

“and tomorrow? what’s tomorrow’s outlook?” hoseok asks, teasing now as he swings their hands between them. 

“oh, tomorrow’s outlook is exactly the same. and would you believe it? so is the day after that. and then the rest of the week. the foreseeable future and then some, actually.” 

“that’s incredible. astounding, really,” hoseok says. 

“that’s about the sum of it, hyung,” jimin says, and it is. 

the sum of them is both incredible and astounding. 

and it’s not only a possibility, no longer just what jimin hopes for most. 

now, it’s real. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

it’s not strange, being around one another in a professional setting now that their personal relationships have changed. 

they’ve always loved one another and respected one another’s professional and artistic goals and they’ve always found a way to channel one into the other. jimin has always thought that a not insignificant fraction of their success comes down to how from the start, even from the very beginning, they’d focused all their energy on not only tearing down the barriers that people tried to put between them but taking the things people would use to divide them and pushing them to shield all seven of them from other things, from other people as much as they could and as much as they’d needed to. 

that didn’t mean it was always easy, committing to knowing each other and sharing that much of themselves with one another. it’s messy and it’s complicated. it takes constant effort, maintaining boundaries in a way that keeps them feeling safe and secure without distancing them from one another. they make mistakes and they’ve all gotten it wrong before, they’ll all get it wrong again. it took a long time for them to get comfortable with being open with one another about what they need, what hurts them, what they’re disappointed by in one another. they have a lot of tough conversations still and those aren’t going to suddenly cease now, but they’ll continue to be worth it for the same reason they always have been - because the point is always to understand one another better. to know one another, to help one another, to _love_ one another more and more and more. always more. 

by now, they know each other professionally as well as they know each other personally. they know how they each are in front of cameras, they know how everyone likes to work and why that is, for the most part. 

they’re comfortable as colleagues because they’re completely comfortable with one another in a hundred other messier, more complicated, far more stripped down and visceral ways. 

it’s easy to slip into pro mode and it’s not all that different from how they are in other ways, at other times with one another because their priority professionally is the same as it is personally - to achieve their dreams together. 

loving each other doesn’t necessarily make that easier, but it makes working at getting it right that much more important. 

being in love with each other and acknowledging that now changes … well, not much, actually. 

“were we supposed to bring our own ideas for this?” jimin wonders out loud in the car. they’re on their way to a meeting with a new producer who has been hired for ‘Run BTS’ and jimin can’t remember exactly what namjoon had said when he’d briefed them about this yesterday. 

that might maybe be because namjoon had been sitting comfortably half in yoongi’s lap and half in hoseok’s at the time and jimin had been distracted, trying to figure out why both of them were looking at namjoon adoringly instead of crying out in what had to be the absolute agony of having their twiggy little legs pinned under namjoon’s thick ass thighs. hoseok had a fair amount of muscle from dancing and his legs were probably his strongest body part, but still. namjoon is a lot of man. a considerable amount of man. a generous amount of man, which works in his favour given that there’s six people who want a piece of him. 

but yoongi had only curled his hand down over namjoon’s kneecap and jimin had suddenly remembered an article he’d read about superhuman strength manifesting in instances of crisis due to strong emotional reactions and started to wonder if yoongi would lift a car if namjoon asked him to. 

so now he can’t really remember most of what namjoon had actually said, to be honest. 

“i mean if you have ideas, feel free? but you didn’t have to do homework for this,” namjoon says mildly, glancing up from his phone. 

in the back of their car, hoseok is cooing happily at his ‘animal crossing’ game, so jimin probably doesn’t have anything to worry about if neither of them are worked up about it. hoseok and namjoon are the most serious about their jobs, even if that doesn’t mean they’re always serious, are sometimes not serious at all, but they’re each a pretty good measuring stick for whether or not jimin needs to be dialing into his absolute focus for something, so if they’re at ease, he can be too. 

“it’s just a quick introduction meeting, jimin-ah. nothing to be stressed about,” namjoon says like he can read jimin’s mind and jimin reaches out to hold his hand just as easily as he would have if they weren’t already somewhat committed life partners. it’s still pretty great to be able to do it now knowing that they are, though. it’s completely wonderful when namjoon lifts jimin’s hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “quick and easy, in and out, and then we’ll grab some food on the way back for dinner, hmm?” 

jimin relaxes back into his seat, his hand still in namjoon’s. behind them, hoseok is excitedly chirping something about turnip prices and jimin loves this, jimin loves them. he can’t wait to just go home and be together, all of them sitting down for a meal. it’s been a long and complicated week, fraught and intense at turns and there hasn’t been a moment of it that he regrets, but he longs now, he finds, to be still in this at last. to just be with them. 

( though he and taehyung are definitely going to revisit that fraught and intense thing tonight for sure. )

that aside, it’ll be nice to get this schedule out of the way and then just regroup, share a meal with all of them around the table and none of them battling with this by themselves, or feeling like they’re alone in it or wrong about it, anymore. 

it’ll be incredibly gratifying, jimin thinks, to just sit together in acknowledgement of this. he’s restless and eager for that now because it’s still so new and novel to him, but he can’t mind that they’ve still got a job to do. he doesn’t mind that at all, because they get to do their job together too. 

yoongi and seokjin are still sitting in the other car when the one jimin and namjoon and hoseok are riding in pulls up. taehyung and jungkook are nowhere to be seen and that neither bothers nor piques an interest in jimin. whatever they’re up to is their thing and honestly it’s pretty likely that they’re just curled up in a waiting room somewhere, asleep on one another. 

when jimin climbs out of the car, seokjin and yoongi get out of theirs. 

they flank him as they all make their way up into the building and when they arrive at the door, yoongi holds it open for jimin and his and seokjin’s hands overlap on jimin’s back. 

no one acknowledges it because it doesn’t need to be acknowledged, but jimin catalogues the seconds it takes for them to pull their hands apart, the way seokjin dips his fingers down into jimin’s back pocket and tugs a little when he does, like he’s fidgety with pent up energy, like he’s hyped up after a show and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. 

hoseok reaches out absentmindedly to fix seokjin’s inside out hood and it’s a tiny thing, nothing at all really, but it’s so automatic, so easily domestic. 

today, for a great many reasons, jimin cannot wait to get home. 

all he really wants right now is to be with them and alone like that; just them. just all of them. 

if all he has to do to get there is sit through a quick and easy meeting, jimin can handle that. jimin’s a professional and he’s got this thing down, has had it that way for years. in and out, and then they can go home. one measly schedule and then they’re free. 

jimin greets their new producer with a deep bow and his brightest, sunniest smile. 

_/_/_/

jimin is going to slit their new producer’s throat. 

at first, he’d thought it was just him. the others never miss an opportunity to remind jimin that he’s possessive of them to a degree that pays no heed to where they are or who is watching. jimin has no problem acknowledging that, but he’d appreciate it if they in turn acknowledged that he’s mostly only guilty of it with namjoon, with hoseok, sometimes with jungkook - in other words, with the members who are too sweet and/or unassuming to realize when they’re being hit on. 

it’s not like they’re not globally admired and internationally awarded heart throbs. it’s not like jimin is in any way confused by the desire to touch them, to get close and shoot your shot if the opportunity arises. jimin has been trying to decide when and how to do just that with the rest of them for years at this point. jimin has also been present in and aware of his own life, he knows what it’s like to be wanted. he knows the ins and outs of it better than anyone. 

he thinks maybe that sometimes makes him too wary. makes him too quick to think that people are trying to flirt when actually they’re just being sweet in a clumsy, heavy handed kind of way. 

he tries, these days, to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. 

and he’d afforded just that to their new pd when he’d taken his time shaking namjoon’s hand. he’d even had the good grace to extend it when he’d taken a chance - a liberty, in jimin’s opinion - and slung his arm around namjoon’s shoulders. 

but then this man had opened his mouth and started talking. and it’s not that jimin has a problem with people complimenting namjoon on his intelligence or any of the many other things there are to admire about him. not at all. jimin himself tells namjoon all the time how hot it is that he’s so smart. jimin is basically the acting president of the nerd king kim namjoon fan club. 

but not even he lays it on this thick and that is really, really saying something. 

“our RM’s - ah, our namjoon’s - can i call you namjoon? - his sexy brain has always been a talking point with the fans and we were thinking the series could focus on that for a few episodes,” new-pd (soon-to-be-dead pd) is saying and he’s still got his arm around namjoon’s shoulders. 

jimin’s eyes actually hurt, from being so wide for long. he looks at yoongi, exchanges a quick ‘can you believe this fucking bullshit’ look that yoongi bookends with a shrug, apparently used to people treating namjoon’s person like communal property, or maybe just mature enough to know that namjoon can and will speak up for himself if he’s uncomfortable. and while jimin respects that, it’s simply not him. 

“ _our_ RM,” he says, both words pointed in different but equally sharp ways, “has many talents. he’s gifted in many ways. it’s so kind of you to compliment his brain,” jimin says, mock-simpering in a way that he can’t get in trouble for, “but it might burden him to put him on the spot like that. especially for multiple episodes. we wouldn’t want to pressure him any more than absolutely necessary.” 

while the pd flounders and splutters, jimin turns to namjoon. “namjoon-hyung could you fix my chain for me? i think it’s caught -” he pretends to fumble with the clasp that’s hidden under the collar of his jacket, frowning exaggeratedly and tugging at namjoon’s sleeve, but tugging so hard that namjoon stumbles towards him, effectively making the gross pd’s arm fall away from his shoulders. 

namjoon, predictably, looks only mildly baffled by all of this. hoseok is laughing into the back of his hand. seokjin just looks bored, more than used to this by now. taehyung is playing with the chain around his own neck - layered on over the turtleneck he’d had to wear to cover what jimin had done to his throat earlier on - and looking very far away, indeed. jungkook, jimin is pleased to note, has his eyes narrowed at the pd, who is looking at namjoon’s hands on the back of jimin’s neck in a way that can only be described as ‘openly yearning.’ 

somehow, the pd manages to find his feet again. sort of. 

“oh you’re right, of course, jimin-ssi. namj - ah, RM-ssi - might feel burdened to be the focus of episodes like that. thank you for thinking of this. maybe a better concept would be something like an in-group olympics? i’m thinking thigh wrestling, specifically,” he casts a pointed look at jimin’s thighs, his eyes taking far too long to travel down his body to get there and jimin is so caught between laughing in this man’s face and throwing up in his own mouth that he finds himself momentarily unable to do anything. 

this is when seokjin cuts in. 

probably, jimin realizes, because jungkook has just stepped between the pd and namjoon and jimin. 

taehyung tugs him back and wraps an arm around his waist, whether out of fondness or as a means of containment, jimin does not know. 

“maybe we could all do some thinking about this and meet again next week?” seokjin suggests. “the writing team has some great ideas, i know and they’d really love to be here to discuss this, i’m sure.” 

they’d thought the writing team would be here today, because they’ve mostly been working on this series from the very beginning. but the new pd had appeared alone. and he’s going to disappear the exact same way, if he doesn’t get himself in check immediately. 

“another meeting sounds like a fantastic idea, seokjin-ssi,” the pd says, far too enthusiastically and this time it’s namjoon who has to hold jimin back when he puts his hands on his hips and makes to step forward, because there’s no fucking way, that’s completely unacceptable, that’s - 

“that’s great! let’s absolutely do that!” seokjin says, his coded way of telling the rest of them that they’re never going to see (let alone work with) this person again. and then the pd is nodding and another staff member is saying something about having them write down their measurements for new outfits for an episode that’s been planned for a while now. 

they have staff and managers that could do this for them, but that would involved waiting through the coordination of that and the pd is still hanging around. he seems absolutely loathe to leave the room and this building simply is not big enough for the both of them, so jimin scrawls a list of digits he knows better than his own phone number and gets the hell out of there as quick as he possibly can. he shares a significant look with jungkook before he goes, to which jungkook nods. next to him, taehyung does the same when jimin turns a different look on him. 

footsteps echo jimin’s as he stomps off down the corridor, heading back toward the parking lot and when he turns around, seokjin and hoseok are there like he has developed a second shadow. 

“i don’t need minders,” he huffs, shoving his hands into his pockets as he strides towards their cars. 

“why? are you going to bury the body yourself? you’re pretty fit but i don’t think you’ve got that kind of muscle, babe. that guy has almost a foot on you.” hoseok skips a little to catch up to jimin, hip checks him gently when he gets alongside him. 

“mostly i’m just amazed you left namjoon back there without your constantly potentially violent supervision. is this an entrapment situation? did you install a hidden camera somewhere in the room when none of us were looking?” seokjin’s arm around jimin’s shoulders is a comforting, familiar weight. 

jimin slants a look at him. 

“i left jungkook with strict instructions to protect what’s ours.” 

seokjin snorts at that. 

“and who is going to protect jungkook from getting into a brawl if someone looks at namjoon for too long?” 

it’s like seokjin has forgotten who jimin is. how very seriously he takes his self-appointed role as group protector. 

“that’s what taehyung is there for.” because maybe jimin had to get the hell out of there before he beat someone’s ass, but he trusts jungkook to be slightly more patient but equally as vigilant about these matters. and he trusts taehyung to diffuse anything jungkook is tempted to start. yoongi is, as usual, their last defense against all out mayhem. namjoon - the helen of troy in all of this - can just stand there and be hot. he’ll enjoy that. he’s great at it. 

seokjin seems to consider this. 

“so while yoongi was non-verbally ordering me to not let you out of my sight, you were telling ‘guk and tae the very same thing about namjoon, huh? why do i find that so cute? my little military strategists,” he croons, trying to nuzzle his face into the side of jimin’s neck but getting a sharp elbow in the ribs for calling him ‘little.’ though it does take some of the sting out of it that he’d called yoongi the same. 

“and why are you here? did yoongi hyung give you orders to keep me under control too?” jimin demands, climbing into the car and turning immediately to hoseok. 

hoseok who has followed him into the car, followed him across it and is now climbing into jimin’s seat. on top of jimin. 

“nope,” hoseok says cheerfully, his knees digging into the outsides of jimin’s thighs. “i’m just here because i think it’s hot as fuck when you get all clingy and possessive over namjoon like that.” 

seokjin, climbing in and closing the door behind him, just watches this unfold like exactly none of it surprises him. 

jimin narrows his eyes at hoseok and fists a hand in the collar of his sweater, yanks him forward until they’re almost nose to nose. 

“you think i’m only like that with namjoon? let someone put their hands on you next time hyung, see what happens,” jimin threatens lowly and hoseok, to jimin’s surprise and delight, groans and grabs for jimin’s hips, ruts down against him like he can’t help himself. 

for all that they tell each other almost everything that they don’t directly share and experience together, this part of this thing is new. being able to tell hoseok plainly now that it drives him jimin up the wall having to watch other people touch him releases a kind of tension in him that he hadn’t been aware he was carrying until it became apparent for its brand new absence. 

“oh nooo,” hoseok moans, his eyes falling to jimin’s mouth, “that’s so hot. that’s so - that’s way too fucking hot. you’d get all snarly and vicious like this for me, too? would you punch someone for me, jimin-ah? that’s so hot. i’m gonna die, that’s. so. hot.” 

hoseok’s reaction makes an entirely different kind of tension start to knot in the pit of jimin’s stomach. because the thing about hoseok is that he knows jimin. he knows jimin’s body about as well as yoongi knows his heart, maybe as well as namjoon knows his mind. possibly even as well as taehyung knows his soul. so to have someone know him intimately and not only want him still, but maybe want him more because of that makes something in jimin shiver. after years of feeling like he was wanted but only as an idea or with a time limit, being wanted by people who should already be sick of him, who know the reality of him and find that - the true - version of him desirable is dizzying. 

that it’s hoseok who is thumbing at the tip of jimin’s incisor and wriggling in his lap is entirely, headily gratifying. 

“i think hoseok might have just discovered a new kink,” seokjin observes mildly from his seat and when jimin glances at him he’s pretending to scroll through something on his phone, but he’s sitting suspiciously low in his seat, his legs spread and his hoodie pulled down low over his hips, shifting restlessly against the upholstery. 

“i don’t think hobi-hyung is the only one,” jimin tries to smirk, but finds he can’t because hoseok has decided to just start kissing jimin when jimin isn’t even paying attention. it’s messy to say the least, hoseok for once seeming to either lose or forgo the absolute control over himself that he usually wields so easily, because he drapes himself over jimin like a blanket, just falls right over him and clings. 

it’s so, so heady, for jimin. this is hoseok, the hyung jimin goes to when he needs advice but doesn’t have eight hours to get to the root of the situation from every angle (as he’d inevitably end up doing if he sought out namjoon) or isn’t quite ready to be confronted with the too knowing, too pointed look yoongi will give him that says jimin already knows exactly what he needs to do, he’s just dragging his heels and yoongi won’t let him keep hiding in his feigned confusion. 

hoseok is no nonsense. hoseok doesn’t use their every conversation as an opportunity for an impromptu therapy / bonding session and he can’t hold jimin to a higher standard like yoongi does because hoseok and jimin don’t share those standards the same way or to the same extent. hoseok just lets jimin talk and then tells him what he thinks. hoseok is an uncomplicated, metaphor free ask and receive that goes both ways and provides balance for both of them - not because they always provide and seek in ways that could even be equated, but because neither of them ever turns the other away. 

but here, in jimin’s lap, stretched out over him with his knees tight around him and his hands greedy, his nails scraping against the back of jimin’s neck, hoseok isn’t asking. hoseok is taking. this is very clearly, very overwhelmingly about what hoseok needs. 

“sorry,” he says against jimin’s mouth, his teeth and tongue still sucking at jimin’s lip, “sorry i just, i really. i need. i’ve been trying to give you space, i’ll stop, i promise, i just - for a minute, please. just one minute more.” 

jimin doesn’t know why it’s shocking to him, to hear hoseok talk like that about him, to feel hoseok touch him like this, but it is. it makes his stomach drop, to know how badly his hyung wants him. it makes him feel grateful, humbled by it, but powerful because of it, too. 

he takes a fistful of hoseok’s hair and pulls him back to look up into his face. hoseok’s mouth comes away from jimin’s with a wet pop and he’s looking at jimin like he doesn’t know if he should apologize or start begging. he’s shifting in jimin’s lap still like he can’t make himself stay still. 

jimin lets the hand he has in hoseok’s hair go lax, lets it fall to sit high at the top of hoseok’s spine, his fingers and thumb digging in on either side, a possessive hold - a collar - around hoseok’s neck. hoseok shudders in jimin’s lap, breathes in hard and loud through this nose and sucks his bottom lip up into his mouth in an apparent effort to try and stifle his own whine. it doesn’t work. 

jimin knots the hem of hoseok’s shirt around his fist and pulls it taut around hoseok’s waist, uses it as leverage to pull him closer.

“don’t give me space,” jimin says, watching the words register on hoseok’s face. “show me what you want, hyung,” he says and hoseok’s eyes slip shut, his hands clenching where they’re banded around jimin’s biceps. “you can’t have it yet,” jimin reminds him, reminds himself while he’s at it, “but soon. really, really soon hobi-hyung, i’m gonna give you everything you need. so show me what i’ve been missing out on.” 

this time, they meet in the middle when hoseok leans in. 

this time when hoseok kisses jimin, he slides his hands up over jimin’s chest and gets both hands on jimin’s neck, the tips of his fingers tilting jimin’s jaw up and holding it there, his palms hot and broad on the column of jimin’s throat. his thumbs draw so slowly up over the jut of jimin’s adam’s apple that it’s the gentleness of the touch that makes his breath lock in his chest - the contrast of that with the way hoseok’s legs are clenched tight around his waist, his mouth mindlessly searching against jimin’s - that makes jimin’s mind go completely and utterly blank. 

“you make me feel utterly fucking reckless,” hoseok murmurs against his mouth, barely able to speak, barely bothering to huff the words out in between tugging at jimin’s lips with his teeth and teasing his tongue with his own. “taehyung makes me want to get on my belly and beg,” jimin’s hands pull harder at the fabric of hoseok’s shirt, thinking about the two of them together. it’s wrapped so hard around his knuckles he can feel the hem straining, can feel the tension in hoseok’s body through it. “but you make me want to push you down and take what i want. fight until you have to give it to me like i want it.” 

and hoseok is a little taller than jimin, but jimin has more muscle so it takes barely any effort for him to lift hoseok up out of his lap and turn him over onto his back on the middle seat. once he’s stretched out and blinking up at jimin, his mouth red and wrecked and his chest heaving, jimin follows him down. he braces himself with his hand on seokjin’s thigh, just above hoseok’s head, and leans in to lick at hoseok’s collarbones. he butts his head gently up under hoseok’s chin until he lifts it up and then he starts a slow, wet trail of his kiss stung mouth up along the tendon standing out in hoseok’s neck. 

“so you’ll roll over for tae, easy as you please, but with me you want to work for it, hyung? what would you do if we got you between us, hmm? how would you be with the two of us?” jimin has his knee pushed up high between hoseok’s legs and when he says this, hoseok’s thighs go tight around it and his hips come up off the seat, bucking underneath jimin. what’s interesting is how under jimin’s hand, seokjin’s thigh does the same thing at the very same time. 

“oh, you both like that, huh hyungs?” jimin’s voice has gone about as low as he’s ever heard it get and he doesn’t fight that, does nothing to quell the dark thrum of something sharp and hungry that sparks in him. “you both wanna get caught between your dongsaengs, huh? that’s kinda dirty of you, hyungs. kinda hot, too.” he lifts hoseok’s outside leg up with his hand hooked under his knee, lifts it off the floor and hitches it up around his waist, dropping his weight so his hips are snug in the cradle of hoseok’s thighs. they’re both mostly hard and when jimin grinds down, hoseok muffles whatever sound he makes by biting his tongue between his teeth. he has an arm thrown up over his eyes and when jimin looks up, he sees that seokjin has his fingers wrapped tight around hoseok’s wrist, pulls it off to side so hoseok has no choice but to look up at jimin. 

“such a helpful hyung,” jimin remarks to seokjin, letting hoseok rut up against him but taking a second to push the hand he has on seokjin’s thigh down between his legs. he wants to know if seokjin is hard. he wants to know if watching jimin and hoseok like this gets to him as much as jimin suspects it might. 

and he’s right. 

now he wants to pull the zipper down on seokjin’s jeans and touch him right here, just like this. he thinks about leaning up to put his head in his lap, letting hoseok get himself off just by humping jimin’s ass, all their clothes still on, while seokjin fucks his mouth. and maybe his mouth drops open, maybe some of the spit pooling in it slips out, or maybe he said all of that out loud because seokjin reaches out with a shaking hand and when he puts his palm over jimin’s mouth, jimin only thinks for a second about sucking seokjin’s fingers into his mouth and getting his tongue around his knuckles. 

“you need to stop, now,” seokjin says and he’s right, but jimin’s still disappointed. he pouts against seokjin’s palm but dutifully sits back on his heels and helps hoseok sit upright again. 

“how come you’re all ‘yes jungkook, of course jungkook, what do you need from hyung, jungkook’ but when it’s me and hobi hyung all of a sudden you remember how to say no?” jimin grumbles, clicking hoseok’s seat belt into place and only groping his thigh a reasonable amount, because seokjin is still his hyung even if he’s decided to be a total buzzkill. 

hoseok sighs and runs his hands though his hair. 

“hyung is right. it sucks, but he is. i got carried away, i’m sorry jimin-ah,” he says, dimpling a smile at jimin all sweet and sheepish. god, jimin wants to sink his teeth into him. it’s while he’s still very seriously contemplating this that he distantly picks up on seokjin mumbling something, his face turned toward the window and his cheeks flushed. 

“-gkook doesn’t make me feel like i’m caught in the web of a maneating spider,” is the tail end of his sentence and he says it so sullenly, so almost self-pityingly that jimin can’t even bring himself to tease him for it. 

hoseok puts on of his hands high up on seokjin’s thigh and offers the other to jimin, palm up, to lace his fingers down into. 

the silence that follows is full, but not tense. it’s hopefully the last of these heaving kind of moments that jimin is going to have to survive, after he spends tonight with taehyung and effectively becomes himself the sacrificial offering that officially marks this thing as undertaken, or whatever. 

his phone vibrates in his jacket pocket just as the driver arrives and they’re setting off.

jungkook 👶🆚🐶  
  
the asset has been secured. as have the asset’s assets.  
  


whatever his face does in response to reading the message, hoseok doesn’t even have to ask who it’s from or what it says.

“you’re both ridiculous. like it’s still unbearably hot how possessive you get, but damn, did you have to get jungkook in on it, too? he might actually hurt someone.” it doesn’t sound like hoseok really believes that, but it does sound like he almost wants to. 

“so you’d be embarrassed if me and him both got mad about some stranger flirting with you in front of us, is that right? is that how you’d feel about it, hyung?” jimin asks, eyes mock-wide and unblinking, bringing a fingertip up to tap against his lips. “you’d hate that, would you hyung? me and jungkook both getting riled up and needing to be a little handsy with you, pulling you close so people know we don’t like it when anyone other than us touches you?” 

“oh. oh dear,” hoseok murmurs, both his voice and his mouth gone small. “ohhhh no.” 

“yeah,” jimin says. “i thought so.” 

he laughs and settles back into his seat, putting his cheek against the headrest to look out the window as they drive through the late evening traffic slow streets of seoul. 

“jimin and jungkook or jimin and taehyung. this is like … life and death levels of difficult choice, only much more serious.” hoseok might be debating with himself, might be talking to seokjin, might have actually been driven out of his mind by lust and doesn’t even realize he’s speaking out loud, jimin doesn’t know. 

“i’m way ahead of you, as usual,” seokjin decides to humour him, it seems. “i’ve already figured out the absolute worst case scenario - are you ready for this?” 

hoseok hums and jimin doesn’t turn to them, but listens anyway. 

“you have to watch jimin and taehyung fuck and jungkook and namjoon fuck. and namjoon and jimin are kissing, and you and yoongi hold you down - or it’d be me, for you, i guess - and we’re naked. and you’re not allowed to touch anyone.” 

there’s a lengthy beat of silence that’s only broken by something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. 

“hyung,” hoseok says, aghast, “hyung how could you? why would you - who even thinks about something like that. have you been writing horror scripts again? have you been moonlighting as an mnet editor?” 

jimin puts his forehead against the cold glass of the window and laughs to himself as he watches a stream of red taillights snake slowly by. 

maybe one day he’ll get to a point where he’s bored enough with their sex lives that he’ll sit down with seokjin and co ordinate the most creative and effective ways to torture them, but for now he just wants to touch them. all of them. however and as much as he can. 

but first, comes taehyung. 

poetically and just like always, taehyung will be both the beginning and the end; all of them the sum of it, for jimin. 

when the car pulls to a stop in the underground parking lot of their apartment building, jimin pretends to hunt for his airpods, giving hoseok the perfect opening to crow about having time to shower before the other car gets back with their food and skip out of the car ahead of them. 

instead of following hoseok, jimin moves in the opposite direction. 

seokjin unclicks his seatbelt and starts to move out of his seat, but jimin swinging a leg over his thighs to sit in his lap very effectively prevents him from doing so. when he looks up into jimin’s face, he looks startled and this quickly crests into an expression of pure and absolute panic when jimin rocks against him, both of them still mostly hard in their jeans. he doesn’t say anything, though. even as he’s looking up at jimin like he thinks this might be a hallucination, his hands are hooking behind jimin’s knees and pulling him closer. it’s sweet, how responsive he is. it’s something else, how much the trusting, waiting look in his eyes makes jimin want to put his hyung to work, for him. 

“you’d be fucking gorgeous, pinned between me and taehyung, hyung,” jimin tells him honestly, openly wanting, “i bet you were breathtaking, being so good to taehyung, giving him everything he asked you for. but you’d be even better for both of us, wouldn’t you?” seokjin’s hands clench around jimin’s kneecaps, his hips coming up off the seat underneath jimin, jerking against him. jimin leans in and licks teasingly at seokjin’s mouth, doesn’t try to kiss him even when seokjin’s lips part instantly, so easily, for him. “do you want to be good for us, hyung? want us to show you what a good boy you could be for us? do you think you could handle the two of us needing you at the same time?” 

abruptly, seokjin’s arms are both banded iron tight around jimin’s waist, holding him down against seokjin so he can rut up into him. he presses his face into jimin’s neck and only speaks when jimin lets him, when jimin doesn’t try to stop or reprimand him, but leaves him space to respond. 

“please. please let me. i want to be good for you, hyu -” he gasps and jimin smiles, grins where seokjin can’t see it. 

pushing his hands into the back of seokjin’s hair, jimin lets the silence that rings out then ride for a second. lets seokjin properly realize what he almost said. 

and then he puts his mouth to seokjin’s ear. 

“you want to be good for your hyungs, seokjin-ah? hyung will let you. hyung would love to show you exactly what your hyungs want to do with a sweet little dongsaeng as lovely as you, jinnie.” 

and jimin doesn’t know if he’s more shocked by how seokjin responds to that by sobbing a low sound and then moving against him harder, grinding up against him near frantically until he goes completely still, clutching jimin close to him, or by how when he comes, he breathes a high, anguished “hyuuung,” as he does. 

“wow,” jimin says, when seokjin’s hold on him loosens enough that he can sit back and lift seokjin’s face to make him look at him. his cheeks are so flushed it almost looks painful, his skin hot to the touch when jimin brushes his fingers over his pretty blush. “don’t be embarrassed, baby,” jimin reassures him, kissing him softly until the tension starts to fall away from his frame. “that was gorgeous, you’re beautiful like this. beautiful always,” he says, running his hands over the lines of seokjin’s still slightly shaking shoulders, touching the warm, goosebumped skin of his bare forearms, tangling their fingers together, touching him everywhere he can find skin. “you’re so good. you did so good for me.” 

the look seokjin gives him is still a little bashful, but so trusting, so wholly open that jimin has to hug him, has to cradle seokjin’s head in his hand and press his face into his own neck because he wants him close, he needs him closer. 

“am i ever going to get to a place where you stop surprising me?” seokjin wonders out loud, sounding for all the world like this whole thing was jimin’s doing, somehow. jimin thinks about how this might have gone down - or not, as the case would probably have been - with anyone else in his place, and can only shrug, unapologetic. 

“i hope not, hyung.” jimin’s hand is so small gripped tight inside of seokjin’s and he feels ten feet tall, sitting in his big beautiful hyung’s lap. 

when they get out of the car, seokjin stumbles slightly and then follows quickly after jimin. it’s not an effort at all for him to let seokjin lean into him, hang half over him as they ride the elevator to their floor. jimin encourages him closer with gentle hands, keeps them wrapped around one another every way they can be. 

the other four must have split between two cars, because taehyung and yoongi are there when jimin lets himself and seokjin in. his confusion at this must show on his face, because taehyung looks up when they walk in and says “joon hyung and kook stopped off to pick up food. they won’t be long.” 

jimin dithers once he and seokjin have their shoes off, wondering if seokjin needs to stay by his side for a while longer, wondering if he wants to, but after a moment he pushes his nose into the hair at the back of jimin’s neck and kisses the top of his spine and then collapses in a spent heap on top of yoongi on the couch. yoongi’s arm lifts immediately to slide around seokjin’s waist and when jimin smiles at them, he turns to find taehyung smiling at him. 

“i’m gonna shower before dinner,” jimin says, backing away instinctively. taehyung takes a step closer and jimin backs out of the room as quickly as he can, because he just had to sit on his super hot hyung as he came calling _him_ hyung and now he has to face taehyung and think about how they’re going to spend tonight together. 

“do you need a hand?” taehyung yells after him and there’s a slim chance that he’s just being sweet but there’s a very considerable chance - a likelihood, really, almost a certainty - that he’s actually being purposefully terrible. 

“hell no! byyyyyyeeee!” jimin calls back over his shoulder, all but running from the living room as fast as his legs can carry him. 

“is he - why is jimin running bow-legged?” he faintly hears taehyung ask and he throws himself bodily at his bedroom door so he doesn’t have to listen to seokjin’s answer. 

_/_/_/

it takes jimin all of thirty seconds to get off, his forehead pressed to the wall of the shower and one hand stuffed mostly into his mouth to muffle the sounds he makes. 

just thinking about jungkook wanting namjoon to hold him down as he begged for seokjin to fuck him this morning would have been more than enough. literally any of the sights he’s been privy to so far this week would have done the job. but then today fell on him like a bomb and now he’s had to deal with hoseok throwing himself at him and then accidentally making his hyung come as they’d _both_ discovered a new kink. 

which is to say nothing of how jimin gets to finally, finally fuck taehyung tonight, so. yeah. thirty seconds, not quite enough lube and a lightning quick mental flip book of everything he has survived so far today pretty easily has jimin sinking his teeth into the spit slick skin around his knuckles, his whole body shuddering as he shakes through orgasm. 

any other time, any other day, with anyone else waiting for him, he’d happily take care of it with them, but tonight is different. tonight’s going to be special and jimin doesn’t want to already be worked up with residual wanting when he gets to touch taehyung for the first time. sex with taehyung isn’t going to be about immediate or fast-tracked gratification. not for jimin. not this time. 

tonight, jimin wants absolutely no distractions from just touching taehyung and learning how he wants taehyung to touch him. he’s not rushing that for anything. 

he takes his time washing up, methodically working through his evening skin care routine and feeling calmer, more collected with every step. 

he still pauses inside the doorway of his room before he makes to leave, jumps up and down a few times either to dispel the residual energy still sparking, skittering in his veins or to mentally pump himself up before he has to face them all again. he can’t tell which it is or if it actually works at all. 

he throws a couple of punches at the air, realizes this is absolutely something jungkook would do, feels promptly ridiculous, and shakes his limbs out one last time before he heads out to finish this thing off. 

_/_/_/

everybody else is already gathered in the kitchen when jimin walks in. it feels vaguely like walking into the middle of a heavily occupied lion’s den and jimin takes a second to be thankful that he’d needed the extra time it took to blow dry his hair, because it means he can execute his go-to move now. 

as he walks into the kitchen he drops his eyes to the ground and lifts a hand to his hair, brushes it back out of his face exactly like he’s done a thousand times before. 

jungkook drops a bottle of soda. 

“seriously?” yoongi asks, stooping to pick it up because jungkook makes no move to, just stands frozen in the middle of the floor still staring at jimin. “c’mon, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen him do that. how are you still such a disaster gay?” 

jungkook doesn’t look away from jimin. 

“i’ve never seen him do it the night before we’re all allowed to have sex with him!” he protests, almost hissing at yoongi and jimin - stupidly and also much to his humiliation - blushes. 

“it’s not our fucking wedding night, would you chill out,” he blusters, still feeling unsteady because he’d thought he might like this - going last, being the final piece of the puzzle - but he hadn’t realized he’d like it quite this much. even as he takes a seat at the table, he can feel several pairs of eyes track his every movement. he would feel like prey, if this wasn’t a position he’d put himself in. if this whole situation wasn’t entirely his doing, his very intention from the moment he and taehyung had sat down to plan this out. 

“uh. it kind of is,” seokjin says, taking a container of tonkatsu out of namjoon’s hands as he dishes up out of the takeout bags that are lined up on the counter. “you’re losing your bangtan virginity tonight.” 

jimin raises an eyebrow at him. 

“well actually _hyung_ ,” at jimin’s stressing of the word, seokjin flushes prettily. “i don’t have any kind of virginity left to lose, sorry to disappoint you.” 

hoseok leans in over jimin’s shoulder to put a cup of water next to his plate. 

“why would that disappoint us? you’ve had a bunch of probably incredibly athletic and ambitious sex. it’s not like that’s not going to benefit us too, now.” 

this time, jungkook drops a stack of napkins and disposable chopsticks he’d been carrying over to the table. 

“oh sweetheart,” seokjin says pityingly, reaching out to take hold of jungkook’s wrist once he’s in range and tugging him down to sit in his lap. “just one more day. you can do it, ‘guk. fighting!” he lifts jungkook’s hands up into the air, his own hands folded around them to make victory fists. 

jimin doesn’t think about how seokjin’s hands had been curled around his like thirty minutes ago. he doesn’t think about how seokjin and jungkook’s hands are basically the same size. if there is some correlation or extrapolatory comparison to be made there, jimin does not know it. 

jungkook stays in seokjin’s lap and forgoes whatever other table setting tasks he’d been planning on completing in favour of putting his arms around seokjin’s neck and kissing him slowly, oddly sweet instead. seokjin has his arms looped around jungkook’s waist and he’s smiling as they kiss. jimin hasn’t yet seen them like this with one another. they’re being soft. gentle. it’s the antithesis of their usual mode of interaction and yet it looks exactly right, the two of them curled up into one another, touching each other so easily, almost reverently. 

jimin wonders if this is what it looks like when jungkook finally gets what he wants to the end that he can just be still and content in it, for a moment. it’s slightly terrifying to calculate just how often he’s had to get fucked to get him here, if that’s what they’re looking at now. but there’s six of them and only one of him, after all. jimin maybe wouldn’t mind taking on a couple extra shifts if any of the others find themselves needing a break. 

gradually the rest of them drift over to the table, settling in around it. it’s been a couple weeks since they all sat down to eat together, maybe a month since they did so with nothing and nowhere to immediately rush off to after. 

“this is nice,” jimin says, after namjoon has reached across the table to pile pieces of bulgogi on top of jimin’s bowl of rice. 

“what, being waited on hand and foot?” yoongi asks, which is rich of him, jimin thinks, given that taehyung is currently thumbing sauce from the side of his mouth. 

“no. just … us. all of us together like this.” 

hoseok grins at him and seokjin hums. 

“i want to be contrary and say something sarcastic about how we’ve lived in one another’s pockets for far too many years at this point, but sadly, i know what you mean. even more tragically, i feel the same way. it’s different now. it’s better, somehow.” 

“yeah, i like this better, too,” jungkook adds and jimin rolls his eyes at him. 

“oh really? you like having turned six global megastars into total putty in your hands? how shocking. how totally out of character for you, jungkook-ah.” 

jungkook, still in seokjin’s lap but being spoon fed by hoseok now, only closes his eyes and grins, totally content with his lot, it would seem. 

“you shouldn’t have been born before me, if you were going to be so jealous of my baby privilege, hyung,” he says and it’s hilarious to jimin, how he, taehyung and hoseok all frown at that, horrified by the very thought. 

“jimin and taehyung split up? no universe would ever dare,” hoseok says, shaking his head as he neatly folds a wrap and lifts it to yoongi’s mouth. yoongi blinks before he opens up for it and jimin can only tell how hard he’s trying not to smile because he’s actively looking for it on yoongi’s face, sees the beginnings of it dawn at the corners of yoongi’s mouth before he schools his expression again. 

“jimin and taehyung with jungkook in the middle, though,” namjoon muses, grains of rice falling from the chunk held between his chopsticks as he leaves them hovering uselessly in mid air, his attention called away far, far away by his own train of thought. 

“we’ve already had this discussion today,” hoseok says, dodging it easily when jungkook leans over and tries to lick his fingers, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone besides jungkook and maybe satan himself. 

“we have?” jungkook asks, interested, but jimin interrupts before hoseok can respond. 

“was that a ‘discussion’, hyung?” he asks, propping his chin up on his hand and looking pointedly across the table at hoseok, where he’s sitting next to seokjin. they both go beet red and jungkook reaches out to touch both their cheeks in turn, marvelling at how quickly their twin blushes spread. 

“what the hell did he do to the two of you?” jungkook asks, peering between them curiously and then turning to look across the table at jimin, but dropping his eyes back down to his plate when jimin licks at the corner of his mouth and winks at him. 

“this is bullying,” jungkook decides. “i’m being bullied.” 

“no, babe. you’re just not being given what you want. that’s a different thing,” namjoon explains, like they’re both equally terrible and not at all acceptable to him if it means jungkook isn’t happy. 

“well whatever it is, i don’t like it,” jungkook mutters, eating in pout when seokjin starts feeding him in earnest, like he thinks a full stomach is the solution to all of life’s problems. probably because he really does think that a full stomach is the solution to all of life’s problems. 

“new experiences are hard to understand, at first,” jimin tells jungkook amiably, “you’ll get used to it eventually, i’m sure.” 

jungkook brings his knees up and hugs into them, still in seokjin’s lap. 

“i have never in my life done anything wrong and i don’t understand why that man,” he points across the table at jimin without lifting his head from where he has tucked it under seokjin’s chin, “insists on pretending otherwise. am i not the best boy? could any of you claim to have met a boy more gooder than me? surely not.” 

taehyung tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he looks at jungkook, considering, tapping his chopsticks on the side of his bowl. 

“i can’t tell if the problem is that he’s been spending too much time with namjoon again or that he has recently done a ‘bleach’ rewatch and is overly identifying with orihime. again.” 

“actually hyung,” jungkook announces, unfurling from seokjin’s lap and standing up, both of his hands palm down on the table, “the problem is that your boyfriend won’t fucking touch me.” 

“yah,” jimin snaps, standing up as well and reaching across the table to grab jungkook by the collar of his hoodie. he shakes him a little but pushes him away when jungkook’s gaze falls to jimin’s fist at his throat, his eyes visibly darkening. “i’m your boyfriend too, you brat.” 

jungkook blinks. and then he blinks again; hard like he’s trying to bring the sight of jimin in front of him into re-focus. then he looks down at the spread of plates and bowls between them on the table and jimin can tell from the way his eyes cut away to the side that he’s calculating how much of a mess he’d make if he were to climb up onto the table to get to jimin and how likely he’d be to get away with it, anyway. 

“don’t,” jimin tells him. “don’t you dare, jungkook.” 

“fine,” jungkook concedes, “but only because i’m happy as fuck that you called yourself my boyfriend.” he looks like he’s battling with himself, trying to make sense of his desire to cause the utmost mayhem at all times as it exists now alongside his apparent awe at the not-actually-news news that jimin is his boyfriend. that all of them are his boyfriends. he steps back from the table, giving the distance between him and jimin one last speculative and somehow threatening glance and then folding himself carefully onto yoongi’s lap. 

“hyung,” he says, leaning on the arm of the chair next to yoongi so he’s not crushing him but also hooking his fingers down under the collar of yoongi’s shirt and holding on, “hyung, taehyung’s boyfriend who is also my boyfriend and your boyfriend too is being mean to me in front of our other three boyfriends, don’t you think that’s unfair of him? don’t you think i don’t deserve this?” 

yoongi squints at him. 

“i’m not actually totally clear on what ‘this’ is. you know he’s not allowed have sex with you before he has sex with taehyung, right? that’s not personal, 'guk. he’s not trying to be mean.” 

“but hyung,” jungkook says, and then he holds eye contact with jimin as he leans down to whisper into yoongi’s ear. jimin pretty easily makes out the word ‘kiss’, and it seems like the rest of them too. 

“holy shit,” hoseok says. “you haven’t even kissed him? you didn’t let him grind up on you a little bit? sit in your lap for a while? that kind of is mean, honestly, jimin-ah. like. to both of you.” 

jimin rolls his eyes but it doesn’t matter because his back is to the rest of them as he crosses the kitchen floor to the sink, a pile of plates in his hand. he doesn’t especially want to have this conversation right now. he doesn’t think it would be very fair to taehyung to tell the rest of them, jungkook included, that while it is important to him to do what he can to teach jungkook that no, he can’t always get what he wants, he’s also holding off on kissing or touching jungkook because he wants to too much. because while that’s true and painfully so, tonight is about taehyung and jimin doesn’t want him any less.

“another twelve hours or so won’t kill him, hyung,” jimin says, so he doesn’t say ‘another second of this could kill me, if i have to look at jungkook and be honest with him and me about how much i want him.’ he can’t even bring himself to look at jungkook right now. he wishes, fervently, that he and taehyung were wrapped up in each other behind closed doors already. all he wants is to put his face in taehyung’s neck and hide there for a while, for the whole night. 

arms wind around jimin’s waist as he’s standing at the sink. they’re tanned and toned, lovely wrists wrapped in criss crossing bracelets. taehyung’s hands slip under the bottom of jimin’s shirt, each big enough to span almost the entire distance between jimin’s hips and jimin turns his face into the mess of taehyung’s dark, loose curls when they come into view out of the corner of his eye. 

“how do you always know exactly what i need,” he breathes against the side of taehyung’s neck, shivering when taehyung’s hands start to ghost up over his stomach. 

“i think it helps that what you sometimes need is what i always want,” taehyung says lowly, dropping his chin forward over jimin’s shoulder so he can look down at his own hands moving over jimin’s skin under his shirt. 

the kitchen is suspiciously quiet. 

“... is everyone watching you feel me up, right now?” jimin asks and he’d meant the question for taehyung, but it’s hoseok who answers. 

“yes,” he says, sounding sheepish and also suspiciously breathy. “but we can stop. we’ll go away if you want us to.” 

jimin tips his head to the side so taehyung can drag his cheek up along the side of his neck and then slowly back down, the whisper of the touch, the feeling of taehyung’s bare skin against jimin’s making him shudder. he thinks about dragging taehyung away right now, pulling him out of the room and away from prying eyes to have him all to himself. 

he steps back from the sink and pushes taehyung sideways a couple steps, catches him by the waist and guides him until he’s turning around, hopping up to sit on the countertop like jimin wants him. he does all of this easily, having no clue what jimin is doing but letting his body simply respond to the touch of jimin’s hands, instead. sometimes even when their words are saying one thing, their bodies are communicating an entirely different message. words aren’t always necessary between the two of them and sometimes, jimin thinks, they only serve to trip them up where their bodies could navigate one another’s message with just one sense; by touch alone. 

pausing to lift his hand to taehyung’s cheek, jimin steps between taehyung’s spread knees and leans up to kiss him. taehyung responds easily, opens up for him automatically. 

and when jimin turns back around to face the table and reaches for taehyung’s hands to bring them back to the hem of his still rucked up shirt, taehyung gets it instantly. 

he winds himself around jimin in a way that’s distinctly serpentine, all of him moving all at once. he pushes the heel of one foot between jimin’s thighs to nudge them apart and keep them that way. at the same time, his hands meet at the waistband of jimin’s track pants and then part in opposite directions; his right hand re-mapping the territory he’d been previously exploring up over jimin’s chest and the fingertips of his left hand teasing down underneath the band of jimin’s underwear. he noses behind jimin’s ear and then leans right down to press a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the underside of jimin’s jaw and all jimin does is lift his chin to give him easier access and lean back with his elbows stacked up on taehyung’s thighs, smiling faintly as he looks across the room to the dinner table. 

jungkook, namjoon, hoseok, yoongi and seokjin are all wearing some variation of the same expression: jaws dropping, eyes wide and dark, and seokjin and hoseok reaching blindly to grasp for one another’s hands. 

and then taehyung nips at jimin’s earlobe, tugging at his earrings with his teeth. 

“can i go lower?” he asks, muffling the question by speaking with his mouth pressed up under jimin’s ear, but scratching lightly at jimin’s stomach with his fingernails just in case jimin doesn’t understand what he means. he needn’t have bothered. 

“touch me wherever you want. however you want,” jimin tells him, loud enough for all of them to hear. loud enough that they have no choice but to hear. 

and then he cranes his neck toward taehyung and stretches up to kiss him, sucking wetly at taehyung’s bottom lip. taehyung’s fingers push down into his underwear, his big hand warm and a little rough when he curls it around jimin’s dick. taehyung hums and sucks at jimin’s tongue when he pushes it into his mouth. his right hand has jimin’s shirt rucked up underneath his armpits so the whole room has an unhindered view of it when he pinches at jimin’s nipples in turn, scratching at the rise of jimin’s pecs like he wants to leave his mark. he’s just holding jimin’s cock in a lose fist, just feeling him stiffen up in his hand. jimin starts to move, rocking his pelvis forward into the hold taehyung has of him and when taehyung’s response to that is to tighten his grip and groan low and loud into jimin’s mouth, a chair scrapes, screeching against the floor. 

when jimin glances over at them, hoseok and namjoon are holding jungkook down where he’s apparently just tried to upend himself and yoongi off the chair they’re sitting on. even with yoongi’s arms both banded tight around his middle, it looks like jungkook might still be able to make a break for it. 

jimin reaches up to cup taehyung’s chin in his hand and then, maintaining eye contact with jungkook, licks at taehyung’s mouth, his tongue parting taehyung’s lips but never quite dipping inside. 

all four legs of yoongi’s chair lift from the floor when jungkook tries to stand and yoongi’s determined hold on him means that jungkook just lifts him too, taking the chair with him. 

jimin grins at him, licking at the tip of his incisor and spreading his legs further apart for taehyung’s hand. he can feel taehyung hard against his back and he shifts into him, twists his hips back and tries not to laugh when taehyung and jungkook gasp in chorus. 

“will you take me to your room, taehyung-ah?” jimin asks, still looking right at jungkook. “please, tae. want you. want you now, please.” 

taehyung breathes in sharply and then starts to detangle himself from jimin, pulls his shirt back down and hops down off the counter to catch jimin by the wrist and start to tug him out of the room. 

the noise it makes when yoongi’s chair bangs back down onto the ground - because seokjin has thrown himself bodily onto jungkook, who is still being held down by yoongi, namjoon and hoseok - shocks a delighted giggle out of jimin, who lifts a hand to wave at jungkook. 

“jin-hyung,” jungkook says urgently, “i think we’re going to need that rope.” 

_/_/_/

jimin is still laughing when taehyung kicks his bedroom door closed behind them, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to press his smiling mouth to taehyung’s when taehyung pushes him back onto his bed and follows him down. 

“you enjoy seeing him suffer way too much,” taehyung huffs, but one side of his mouth is dimpled up into a smile, too. 

“oh, please,” jimin says, breathless both from laughing and from the deep, searching kisses taehyung barely gives him reprieve from, and even then only to pull jimin’s shirt up and off. “like you didn’t want to push everything off the kitchen table and fuck right there in front of him.” 

taehyung’s hands rip jimin’s sweats down his legs, taking his underwear with them. and then he goes still. he leans in over jimin and presses his face to jimin’s sternum and just … stops. 

jimin lifts his arms up around his back and holds him. 

“i absolutely wanted to have our hyungs tie jungkook down and force him to watch us make each other come, like, a lot of times,” taehyung says, his voice soft and close. “but also i’m kind of freaking out that i have you naked on my bed. the duality of man, huh?” when he peeks up at jimin through his dark, messy bangs, his smile is small. he looks vulnerable and nervous about that, maybe nervous about other things besides, but he’s here. he’s looking at jimin and letting him see him, letting him hold him. 

jimin looks up at the ceiling and smiles where taehyung can’t see it. then he channels some attempt at exposure back into his expression and looks back down at him, lifts his hands up into taehyung’s hair and pushes his fingers through it. 

“that’s okay, baby. i’ve been freaking out about the thought of this on and off for a few years now.” 

taehyung props his chin up on jimin’s chest and just looks up at him. gazes at him, really, like they’ve been here a hundred million times before. like they’re together like this always. or were always meant to be, maybe. 

“i’m so in love with you that i don’t know what to do with myself,” taehyung says, and jimin in turn, has no clue what to do with that. 

it’s absolutely fucking wild to him, that he found this person he understands better than himself, loves more than he thought it was possible to love, and who shares those same feelings not just for jimin, but _with_ jimin for namjoon, seokjin, yoongi, hoseok and jungkook too. getting to love taehyung would have absolutely bowled jimin over, in another life, but getting to love with taehyung is a privilege that jimin thinks couldn’t possibly exist in any shape or form that isn’t right here, just like this. 

“i think that’s kind of the beauty of this, when you break it down. that neither of us have any clue how this goes because that’s how totally new to us it is.” jimin’s hands naturally take on a new path, trailing down out of taehyung’s hair to skim over the back of his neck, dipping down under the collar of his shirt to spread out across his shoulder blades. “it scares the fuck out of me, because i’ve never done this with someone i loved, before. i don’t think i could do it with anyone other than you. i’m only okay with the idea of doing it with the others because we’re going to figure this out together, first. because i’m gonna learn how, with you.” 

taehyung dips his head to press a kiss right over jimin’s heart, which all but hammers in response. 

“i think i need to take this slow. i think i really want to take it slow, is that okay?” taehyung asks, lifting his eyes to jimin’s and just that; just locking eyes with him when they’re lying here like this, when they’re together this way at last, takes jimin’s breath away. 

“i’d really like that,” jimin tells him, and he crosses his arms up around taehyung’s neck when he leans up onto his elbows over jimin and moves to kiss him. 

“i already love this. i love you every way you can love someone. think you inspired me to invent a couple of new ones, too,” taehyung says, so close that jimin almost goes cross eyed trying to look at him. “can i show you what i mean?” he asks, and jimin closes his eyes, then, gives up and gives in and gives himself over to this moment - to this person - to taehyung; wholly. taehyung is his, so he is taehyung’s. it’s simple. 

“show me how you love me, taehyung-ah,” jimin whispers, and when taehyung’s mouth lowers to meet his again, jimin is lost. 

_/_/_/ 

under taehyung’s hands, in the sweep of his palms down along the lines of jimin’s body, jimin is found. 

taehyung’s mouth whispering jimin’s name against the quivering muscles of his stomach feels like the first time jimin’s ever heard it; the first time it’s ever been said. 

it’s a slow trade of touches; taehyung leaning down over jimin to learn the shape and slope of jimin’s ribs with the tip of his nose and then turning over onto his back and lying back so jimin can climb up over him and greet every inch of skin bared to him by undoing another button on taehyung’s shirt with a kiss. 

it takes forever to get taehyung naked, it seems like, because neither of them want to come apart for long enough to rid him of his pants. his shirt stays cuffed to one wrist when he goes to his stomach between jimin’s legs because jimin can’t reach to tug it off when taehyung insists on pressing his face to the crease between jimin’s hip and thigh and then lifting jimin’s leg over his shoulder, squirming closer to bite at the meat of jimin’s ass cheek. 

by the time they’re sitting facing one another on the bed, taehyung is finally naked now and up on his knees, leaning down over jimin with his hand gripping the back of jimin’s neck tightly, maybe like he wants to keep him still, but maybe like something else entirely because jimin makes no move to move away from taehyung, only lifts his face to the kiss and sighs softly for taehyung’s tongue. 

the more they touch each other, the easier it gets. the better it feels, the simpler it becomes. jimin’s brain is quiet now, all his thoughts and fears hushed in the face of taehyung naked in front of him, touching jimin like his body is an extension of taehyung’s that he’s just discovered and is determined to be as intimately acquainted with as the rest of himself. 

there’s a tension underlying it, though. a slight tremble in taehyung’s hands that jimin is waiting for the cause of to become apparent. he could ask, and taehyung would tell him, jimin knows. or maybe taehyung hasn’t noticed it and they’d have to figure it out together. but jimin waits to see if taehyung is aware of it, first. it’s easy to be patient when everything he wants - he already has; taehyung’s mouth familiar to his, now, taehyung’s skin breaking out in goosebumps when jimin runs the palms of his hands up over his elbows, his fingers digging in around his biceps. 

jimin’s hands fall to taehyung’s hips, push back to slip down over the small of taehyung’s back, spreading out across his ass and taehyung shivers hard and then abruptly goes still again. jimin waits. he brings his hands higher up on taehyung’s back again, his thumbs finding the cute little dimples that bracket the base of his spine and holding on. jimin waits. 

“how are we - how do you want -” taehyung sits back on his heels but is careful not to dislodge jimin’s arms around him. his hands are in his lap, fingers twisting nervously, and jimin has to bite down on his own tongue to keep from outright cooing at him. 

“baby,” he says, leaning in to brush his lips against the furrow in taehyung’s chin, kissing up along the tense line of his jaw until he feels taehyung relax under his mouth. “talk to me. what are you thinking about?” it’s not often that jimin hears taehyung stutter, not when it’s just the two of them. the effort it’s taking him to figure out how to say whatever’s on his mind is startling to see, now that they’re here, together like this. 

“jin hyung says,” taehyung starts, but then his eyes lock on jimin’s mouth and he winces, his teeth clacking together. 

jimin is gratified, but still lost. 

“jin hyung says?” he prompts, and taehyung shakes his head slightly, drags his hands roughly and frustratedly through his own hair and then visibly sets his jaw. 

“jin hyung says i need to try harder to ask for what i want. i don’t always … i like making you all happy. it makes me happy to make you happy, but i also …” he trails off, and jimin smiles softly at him. takes pity on him. 

“you also have your own wants and needs. and they’re just as important. they’re important to us, taehyung-ah. very important to me,” jimin adds, though he hopes he doesn’t really need to. he hopes taehyung already knows that, by now. “is that what you’re worried about? you want something you’re not sure i’ll be on board with?” 

the thought should give jimin pause. or taehyung’s nervousness should, maybe. but it’s taehyung. this is taehyung that’s sitting in front of him, tying his own fingers in knots and jimin can’t think of a single thing he wouldn’t be down for, if taehyung is into it. 

taehyung moves to sit cross-legged instead, getting comfortable. he reaches out to trace his fingers up and down the inside of jimin’s thigh and sighs softly like the touch is grounding to him. 

“we obviously got better about talking about sex over the years. eventually, after i almost accidentally provoked you into murdering me,” he says; not a wholly inaccurate summation of how jimin had learned to cope with taehyung’s outlandish and almost always terribly timed confessions. jimin still smiles at the memory, and taehyung does too, after a beat, sheepish and wry. “but we also never talked about any of the stuff we were doing with other people.” 

at this, jimin is genuinely confused. 

“well,” he says, feeling himself frowning even though he tries - he really tries - not to. “i didn’t especially want to think about you with people that weren’t me? weren’t us? it’s not like i was mad at you or that i didn’t do the same thing sometimes but i -” 

“no, no i get it,” taehyung reassures him, bending down to press a kiss to jimin’s knee cap, “i struggled with that too. with you, with all of us. i got it - we weren’t ready yet. that didn’t make it easier but it was what it was. i just mean that because of how things happened, we’ve never really talked about our … preferences.” 

abruptly, he looks nervous again. jimin is totally baffled now. 

“you mean like … our sexualities? i mean,” jimin’s nose scrunches as he thinks, “we’re all over the map, probably? i even thought hoseok hyung was straight for a while, that was a terrifying time -” 

“no,” taehyung interrupts, laughing a little, and it’s so nice to see the wide stretch of his smile that jimin has to sit forward to kiss him. he doesn’t realize his eyes have slipped shut until he’s opening them up again to a taehyung that’s much closer now because he has opened up the cross of his knees and pulled jimin inside them. their shoulders touch, taehyung curved down and in to get close to jimin and jimin breathes in hard through his nose, breathes in the smell of taehyung and tries not to shake. 

“i didn’t mean it like that. i meant like -” taehyung sucks briefly at the inside of his bottom lip, his skin dimpling under it. “do you switch, ever? it’s fine if you don’t,” he’s quick to say, “it’s totally fine if you don’t like topping at all, but i just -” 

in all likelihood, jimin would assume that taehyung goes on speaking. he’s sure he does. but jimin doesn’t hear a single word that comes after that. he’s looking at taehyung, watching his mouth move, but his ears are full of white noise. when taehyung’s mouth snaps shut, his eyes downcast but still trying valiantly not to frown or pout, awareness comes back to jimin in the form of roaring, ringing silence. 

of all the things taehyung could have said. of all the things that could be a point of contention for them at this stage of this. out of all the hundreds and millions of things taehyung could misjudged jimin on - 

“you think i’m a bottom!?” 

jimin knows it’s dumb to feel betrayed by this, and yet. taehyung is his best friend, his soulmate. one of the loves of his life. taehyung knows him better than he knows himself, pretty often. and he’d thought jimin was a bottom. 

“literally what about me says ‘bottom energy’ kim taehyung? and if you say some dumb shit about my height or my build or how pretty i am, so help me fucking god i will -” 

“no!” taehyung all but yelps, “no it’s not - of course it’s not any of that! although, entirely unrelatedly,” one side of his mouth dimples, considering, “you are very pretty. you’d probably be the prettiest person i’d ever seen in my life if you weren’t the hottest person i’d ever seen in my life instead, but it’s not that, it’s not like that means anything in terms of what you like,” he’s quick to try and placate jimin and it doesn’t work, because - 

“if it’s not that, then what the fuck is it?” jimin is wracking his brains trying to think about which of his hook-ups taehyung might have seen him with, or what he might have said to have mislead taehyung so horribly. he can’t even begin to think of an angle of his sexual energy that says ‘pillow princess,’ especially when he exists right here, just like this, in direct and constant contrast to the very picture of that - jeon jungkook. 

some of what jimin is saying seems to have finally infiltrated taehyung’s panic at jimin’s taking offense and he looks openly lost, now. he’s staring at jimin with slowly widening eyes that keep cutting away to the side and then dragging back to - 

jimin closes his eyes and counts to ten. his hands curl into fists somewhere around ‘four.’ 

“kim taehyung,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest so he doesn’t try to punch taehyung, depending on his answer here, “did you think i was a bottom just because i’ve got an incredible ass?” 

taehyung blushes and says nothing. 

jimin seethes, and says nothing. 

“i didn’t mean to make assumptions,” taehyung says, leaning in to nuzzle up under jimin’s jaw apologetically, contrite now. “i just … your ass was my gay awakening. or my sexuality awakening, i guess? i don’t even know if i am gay, but my sexual attraction began with and still very much centers on your ass, and you can’t have missed the way other people look at it, jimin-ah,” he’s pouting now, which makes the set of his jaw unbearably sharp and lovely. jimin’s still mad, but he’s also in love, so he lets himself turn his face in against taehyung’s, nips more gently than taehyung deserves at the sharp angle of bone under taehyung’s ear. “namjoon has only just started being okay with doing fitting sessions with you, he’s been bribing us for years to switch with him because seeing your ass in tight pants alone is too much for him, the sight of it wrapped up in measuring tape might actually make his brain explode.” 

jimin sighs and shakes his head, despairing. 

“well yeah,” he says, shoving hard at taehyung’s shoulders until he’s balancing his weight back on his hands and then climbing up into his lap, reaching out for taehyung’s cock and jerking it once, tightly, before he’s holding it down between taehyung’s thighs and setting his ass firmly on top of it; his cheeks spread apart over taehyung’s thighs. “i have noticed that my ass is fucking spectacular, taehyung. i know i’m half the world’s subby bottom fantasy, trust me - i know.” 

it’s annoying because it’s so dumb, but it also doesn’t actually affect jimin all that much because he stopped giving a shit about general opinion of him a long ago, and anyone who has actually had or might have a shot at getting to fuck him is smart enough that they’d never make that kind of mistake. 

it’s newly annoying now, because it’s taehyung. 

he looks up at jimin, his face totally blank. and then he looks back down at where jimin is sitting on his cock, his own cock in his hand and his balls squishing against the base of taehyung’s dick when he shifts in his lap, grinding minutely back and forth, the wet head of taehyung’s cock jerking up into jimin’s ass crack and starting to make a mess. 

“wait,” taehyung says, sounding the way he does when someone asks him to do mental math, “wait, so - you’re not a subby bottom. i mean, i know you’re not -” 

jimin’s sure taehyung could actually get to a fucking point if he just gave him enough time, but as much as jimin scoffs at the concept, hearing that taehyung and namjoon apparently very badly want to fuck him doesn’t exactly repulse him no matter how that might go down, so he’s getting impatient. he’s restless; eager and wound up. 

“subby? i could be. depends on the circumstances.” 

jimin finds himself thinking about seokjin getting off under him, getting off on calling jimin ‘hyung’. the hottest thing in the world, jimin suspects, would be further exploration of that. and then a complete turnaround from it. nothing gets him hotter than knowing the intricacies of someone’s kinks and how they’re hardwired between their brain and body in such a way that when he’s in the mood, all jimin wants is to turn them on and on and on. he’d like, he thinks, to wind seokjin all the way up and then see if he could provoke something else entirely from seokjin. 

“but a bottom?” jimin clucks his tongue and it looks like taehyung almost swallows his. “generally no. my ass is just an ad-lib, taehyung-ah. the song itself goes in a very different direction.” 

taehyung’s hands lift to jimin’s hips and he stares at them, gripping jimin’s waist tightly but not trying to keep him still in his lap, just holding on instead, like he’d meant to put some force behind the touch but forgot how to along the way. 

“in hindsight,” taehyung says, voice low and thick, “i can definitely see that i had this very wrong.” 

jimin grabs taehyung’s chin and tilts his face up into the light, holds him still like that so he can’t squirm out of jimin’s grasp or try to hide from how he scrutinizes his face, now. 

“are you disappointed? is this a deal breaker for you?” 

taehyung’s eyebrows draw together, skin wrinkling at the top of his nose and his mouth opens on a sharp inhale, outraged. 

“nothing could be a deal breaker for me, with you,” he states, no room for argument. “absolutely fucking nothing, jimin.” 

jimin lifts an eyebrow. 

“not even if i only ever wanted to fuck you?” 

taehyung blows his hair back out of his face and lifts his chin higher in jimin’s hand. 

“that was what i was freaking out about,” he says plainly, and jimin’s heart only sinks for a second. “even though i thought you were a bottom, i was trying to figure out how to ask you to fuck me,” he explains, and jimin’s confusion must show on his face because taehyung shrugs. “i said my sexuality started with your ass. i didn’t say it ended there too.” 

jimin leans back in taehyung’s lap, his hands looping easily around taehyung’s neck to steady himself. 

“and that wasn’t just a novelty thing? wanting to get fucked by a subby little bottom because you figured no one had ever had me like that, before?” jimin doesn’t really think taehyung would think that way about this or any other aspect of sex, but he also didn’t for one minute imagine that taehyung could ever mistake him for a bottom, so he has to double check, just to make sure. 

“ew, gross,” taehyung says, nose wrinkling in a totally different way but still so cute, “no way. i literally couldn’t give a shit about whatever you’ve done with anyone else, once you had fun. mostly i don’t get past thinking about just touching you, just my hands on you,” taehyung tells jimin, wrapping one arm around his waist to facilitate his lean and watching, dark eyed, as he pushes the palm of his other hand up over the span of jimin’s stomach, his fingers inching up over his abs, “but something about the way jungkook was looking at you out there, the way his eyes were all over you even though i was the one actually touching you …” his palm slides back down, fingernails scratching down through jimin’s shaved pubic hair before he drops his hand low and tight around jimin’s cock, “all i can think about is getting you inside me. feeling you there, in me.” 

jimin sits up onto his knees a little, smiling when the shift of his ass on taehyung’s hard, bare cock makes him gasp like the sound is punched out of him. he pushes his hands up into taehyung’s hair, fisting one at his crown so he can pull him in. 

“we’re going to have a lot of super hot and exploratory sex,” he tells taehyung, tugging taehyung’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucking at it, wet and messy. “who knows,” he says, releasing taehyung’s lip and licking up under it to catch the spit he’s left there, “i might even let you fuck me,” he grinds down in taehyung’s lap, taehyung’s cock pressed up between his cheeks, the head dipping into jimin’s hole when he angles his hips to make it happen, “but what we both want tonight is to find out how good you are at taking it for me, okay?” 

taehyung’s jaw is clenched, his arm gone tight around jimin’s waist. he looks up into jimin’s eyes with his lips parted like he’s begging to be kissed, his tongue pushed right up against his bottom lip like he’s struggling to keep it in. he nods. but that’s not enough. 

“say it, taehyung,” jimin prompts, because he’s still a little messed up over seokjin, because this is who he is, here; this is how he’s good at this. 

“please,” taehyung says, quiet and obedient and jimin closes his eyes and gets to work. 

_/_/_/

“jesus fuckin’ - fuck. please, _please_ , taehyung-ah,” jimin begs, barely noticing that it sounds like he’s sobbing the words, a wet and broken plea that doesn’t stop. “oh, please. i -” 

“you what?” taehyung asks, and it would be terrible if he was taunting in this moment, confident and mocking. it’s worse, somehow, that he sounds nothing but genuine; honestly wants to know what jimin needs so he can instantly give it to him. 

jimin had thought he’d survived the peak of this with taehyung’s dark head of hair bobbing between his legs, the way he’d sat back up with jimin’s knees still thrown up over his shoulders and his mouth red and wet and ruined and dragged his cheek up along the inside of jimin’s thigh. jimin had honestly thought he might pass out, in that moment, with one hand clawed in the sheets, his back arched so far he’d heard something pop and his cock so hard he could feel his heartbeat pulse in it. 

but now there is this; taehyung sitting astride him with his head thrown back, his neck so lovely and long, tendons standing taut, that jimin’s mouth is watering but it’s his hand that’s dripping wet, lube dripping down into his palm, sliding slick right down his wrist from where taehyung is riding his fingers. he hadn’t let jimin do a thing, had pushed his elbows out from under him when he’d tried to sit up and swung a leg across him, lube in one hand, reaching for jimin’s hand with the other. 

now, taehyung is working his own index finger in alongside jimin’s middle and ring fingers and jimin might actually cry. 

“i want -” jimin pants, his free hand biting into the meat of taehyung’s thigh, “let me make you feel good, taehyung-ah. won’t you lie back? let me get my mouth on you, i can do this - oh god, oh fuck - and - and suck you off at the same time, you know how good a multi-tasker i am, let me -” 

taehyung laughs breathlessly and his hand on jimin’s wrist gets tighter, somehow, a vice grip that means jimin can’t move his hand at all, can only lie there underneath taehyung and take it, when taehyung sits up on his knees and then grinds back down on their fingers, the maddening heat of him and the flex of his thighs making jimin feel like he’s actively sacrificing brain cells at the sight. 

“you’re out of your mind,” taehyung tells him, head tipped back and his neck shining with sweat, “if you think i could look at your mouth on my cock and not come in under three seconds. have you seen your mouth, jimin-ah?” his head snaps forward as he’s speaking and his eyes zero in on jimin’s lips immediately, target locked. there’s lube wiped carelessly across his stomach in a gleaming streak that ripples as his stomach muscles contract, his belly clenching up when he pushes his middle finger into himself, too. “if you really want to hurt jungkook’s feelings, you should make him watch you blow me. or namjoon. any of us, honestly. his oral fixation works both ways.” 

not even knowing if it’s the thought of getting his mouth on them, or the mere mention of anything jungkook adjacent, jimin has to close his eyes and breathe in and out purposefully, deep and slow. nothing has ever been this overwhelming. sex has never thrown jimin this far off kilter, all but totally out of control. just the way taehyung’s fingers flex around his wrist makes him feel brand new, somehow, like getting touched by taehyung is giving him an awareness of himself and his body that he’s never had before. 

“let me touch you,” he begs, and taehyung smiles down at him, a beatific and benevolent god before him. above him. in him, down to jimin’s very cells. 

this time when he sits up onto his elbows, taehyung lets him. he leans down, and meets jimin halfway. 

“i love you,” taehyung tells him, the kiss that follows a soft and languid thing, a touch so full and gentle that jimin has no choice but to further unfurl under it, steamed open by it. he pants, open mouthed and lost in this and feels taehyung smile for him. “hey,” jimin whines but taehyung stays hovering just out of reach. “how are we doing this? do you want to use a condom or no?” 

jimin’s head spins. he doesn’t understand the question. he doesn’t understand how taehyung has it together enough to form full sentences. he’s no longer capable of processing language. 

“it’d make the clean up easier, obviously,” taehyung says, shrugging one shoulder carelessly where he’s still sitting on a thick tangle of their fingers, and jimin can barely follow along. “but we’re all clean, so you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” 

right, logic. logic is a thing that exists. jimin remembers that. sort of. the problem is that he’s thinking about an expanded version of the logistical issue taehyung raises. 

“i’ll eat my come back out of you,” he blurts, the words just bubbling up out of him. taehyung blinks at him. “i’ll clean you up, i’ll do whatever you want me to, just let me come inside you. please. i want to -” he can’t think, can’t do a thing to shape or halt the flow of his words. “after last night, after seokjin hyung, let me -” 

“oh,” taehyung says, sitting all the way up onto his knees now and drawing his own bottom lip into his mouth, his teeth tugging at it, sucking in a loud, hard breath. “you like that, huh? you like the thought of coming in me after our hyung did?” 

it’s not like it would be like that, not exactly. it’s been twenty four hours and seokjin’s come has long since been washed away, jimin’s not stupid. but the idea of it. the thought that he’s about to be inside taehyung when their hyung was there before him, is - 

“do you want to fuck me when i’m still full of his come, some time?” taehyung moves up the bed a little, just until he’s braced over jimin with his knees snug around jimin’s ribcage and his hand on the headboard above jimin’s head. his other hand curls around his cock, stroking himself slowly right in front of jimin’s face. “i’d let all of them fill me up first, if you wanted. by the time it was your turn i’d be a mess, fucked so full of come it would push out of me, around your cock. would you like that, jimin-ah?” 

honestly, jimin doesn’t give a single fuck if taehyung comes in his mouth right now, he has to lift his head and lick at the head of his cock, get his mouth around it and suck at as much of it as he can get to before his lips meet taehyung’s fist. 

they sob in unison. 

jimin hooks his hands under taehyung’s knees and tries to pull him in, tries to drag him closer, but taehyung stays where he is, only drops his hand from the headboard to cup the back of jimin’s head, to rock forward into his mouth shallowly for just a second, and then he’s clambering off jimin completely, all but throwing himself over to the other side of the bed, his hand between his legs like he’s in pain. 

“that’s just not playing fair,” he whines, his forehead creased up and his shoulders hunched forward protectively, “maybe jungkook’s right, maybe you are a bully.” 

still not thinking, still totally and utterly incapable of thought, jimin follows blindly, rolling over until he can reach taehyung, his hands sweeping up over the span of his back and grabbing at his shoulders to bring him back. 

“sorry,” he says, his lips at the top of taehyung’s spine, “m’sorry baby, i couldn’t help myself.” 

“i’m gonna have to make you wear a mask the next time we do this. maybe the next couple times,” taehyung says, still sounding wounded, and jimin huffs against the back of his neck. 

“i’ll happily acquiesce to any of your requests,” he agrees, “however you want to dress me up, i’m down.” 

again, taehyung curls in on himself. 

“why are you like this,” he asks, low and affronted, like he didn’t just offer to let the rest of their group run a train on him just because jimin might be into that. “also, why aren’t you inside me already? come on,” he reaches back for jimin’s hip and tugs him in, lifting his top leg up and forward to give jimin more room to work. “if you’re going to kill me, the least you can do is fuck me first. gloating to jungkook can be the last thing i ever do, it’d be fitting.” 

“i fucking love you,” jimin says, grinning as he nips at taehyung’s ear, his nose pressed into taehyung’s damp hair. 

“oh my - oh god,” taehyung says, his fingers biting in around jimin’s hipbone as jimin slowly, carefully presses the head of his cock to taehyung’s hole and starts to push in. “oh, same,” he breathes when jimin is all the way there, “i love you, too.” 

it’s so much. it’s taehyung and it is so, so very much that jimin freezes up, his mouth open against taehyung’s shoulderblade, whatever he was going to say or any sound he could possibly make just evaporating on his tongue. he’s _inside_ taehyung. 

“oh fuck. oh god,” taehyung is still mumbling. his hand on jimin’s hip clenches, his fingernails digging in, “please. please move. i need you, jimin-ah.” 

“you have me,” jimin tells him, the words shocked out of him pillowed on a gasp, because he’s moving now, his hips taking the initiative because his brain is broken and his heart is doing its damndest to stage a total coup. “you have me, taehyung-ah.” 

taehyung doesn’t stay still, can’t seem to make himself, because he’s arching back into jimin, his ass pushing against the slow, hard thrusts jimin is giving him. jimin curls his arm around taehyung’s waist, doesn’t need to bring him closer because there is no ‘closer’ than this, but he just wants to feel him, wants to feel their bodies touch everywhere, every way they can. 

“fuck. jesus - fucking - oh, jimin-ah. so good. feels so good,” taehyung is mumbling half sentences, broken phrases that get bitten off between his teeth, split apart by the groans that trip off his tongue. he’s not silent, can’t seem to stop running his mouth, a constant hum that sounds almost like a chant, like a well worn prayer that jimin is interrupting with the press of his hips, the wet push of cock as he works it into taehyung’s ass and then back out again, leaving taehyung squirming and searching, desperate to get it back inside him. 

jimin’s pulse clutches at his chest, his heart racing every time taehyung clenches around him, working himself back onto jimin’s cock. 

“i want to do this in front of the others. want all of them to see us like this,” taehyung says and jimin pushes into him hard, too quick, and quivers against him. “i want to see what every single one of them look like, like this, with you,” he says and jimin can’t help it, his hips pull back and then snap forward, the pace picking up and up and up. 

it’s fast, and it’s loud. it’s deep; jimin spreading taehyung’s cheeks apart so he can get closer. it’s wet and it is maddening, every thrust jostling the both of them - the plunge in, taehyung’s gasps, the slower drag back out and jimin trembles, already eager to be back in taehyung. 

jimin leans up onto one elbow, means to crane to kiss taehyung, but the movement switches the angle up and taehyung whimpers, his soft panting becoming a choked, locked up gasp. he reaches blindly behind himself for jimin’s face, hooks two fingers down over jimin’s bottom teeth when jimin parts his lips for him and tugs. 

“there, right there, just - oh, fuck - just like this,” taehyung says into the side of jimin’s face, holding him there so their cheeks are touching, jimin’s curled up over taehyung’s back and side. 

there’s a new sound, an echo layered over the slick of jimin’s cock punching into taehyung’s ass and the hand on jimin’s hip is gone, taehyung jerking himself off but barely getting a stroke in, his whole body arching back toward jimin as he comes into his fist, his hole clenching so tight around jimin’s cock that it almost, almost hurts. 

his fingers go lax in jimin’s mouth but jimin sucks at them to keep them there, licks around taehyung’s knuckles as he inches forward just that much more, as deep in taehyung as he can get, and he comes too. his arm tightens around taehyung’s waist, holding him as close as he can get him and he shakes right through it, his toes curling and goosebumps breaking out all over his body. his mind is completely quiet, everything before and behind his eyelids bright and blank and his heart is racing, maybe, but he can't quite register it because he feels like all he is is the pounding in his chest - he's inside it, he is it, he knows nothing beyond it. he's a living pulse, curled around taehyung. behind him, over him, in him, with him. the world is one body and they together are the beat that drives it, two pieces of a seven part thing that compose the same melody in every and any combination. unthinking and unseeing, everything makes sense to jimin, in that moment. with taehyung in his arms. 

neither of them speak, their shallow and panting breaths gradually slowing down and syncing up until they’re breathing together, jimin’s face dipped down against the side of taehyung’s neck and taehyung’s hand petting slowly at jimin’s hair. 

“it’s never been like that for me, before,” jimin says finally, mostly thinking out loud, and taehyung wriggles to look back at him, his shoulders mostly flat on the bed now but his hips still snug inside the cradle of jimin’s. he makes no move to de-tangle them. 

“it had never been like that for me either, until hoseok. until us,” he says, his eyes slipping shut. he leaves his arm up around jimin’s shoulders, looking for all the world like he’s about to fall asleep. “isn’t it wonderful? we’re gods, i think.” 

jimin grins even though taehyung can’t see him. 

“yah, wake up,” he shifts his hips and they both hiss, “didn’t i say something about cleaning you up? let me show you how i can speak in tongues for you,” he pulls them apart carefully, the wet sound and sensation making his stomach clench up under the aftershocks of orgasm, his cock almost, almost trying to fill again. 

even with his face creased up in discomfort, his pout displeased for their parting, taehyung is the most beautiful thing jimin has ever seen. jimin would worship at any alter for him, thinks maybe he’ll never be able to see any flat surface as anything other than a place to show whoever or whatever is responsible for this gift just how grateful he is for this, for them. 

“fine,” taehyung says, sounding mock put-upon, “but then you’re carrying me to the shower. and holding me up in it. and carrying me back to bed. also, let me send a picture of your bare ass to namjoon, he’s far too at peace with all of this for my liking. i miss how cute he is when he’s panicking about how hot you are.” 

jimin squints, trying to reconcile this idea with the impression he has of their physically clumsy but otherwise endlessly capable leader. 

“okay, call,” he decides, shrugging easily. he’s always been a fan of weaponizing nudes, honestly. 

“cool. get to it,” taehyung tells him, slapping lightly at jimin’s shoulder and spreading his legs against the sheets, his heels slipping against them. his hips lift helpfully so jimin can get his hands under him, and then jimin has him exactly where he wants him. 

with his arms crossed up behind his head, taehyung’s grin is somehow both sharp and lazy. 

jimin narrows his eyes and then lowers his head. 

he ducks down to get at taehyung, falling for him all over again. 

this time, he falls tongue first. 

_/_/_/

taehyung lets jimin suck him off this time, though he barely gets to feel taehyung’s legs lock up when jimin swallows around him, his throat snug around the head of taehyung’s cock. taehyung jerks him off in the shower, his teeth open high around jimin’s trapeze muscle and sucking to leave his mark. 

by the time they make it back to the bed, barely air drying as they change the sheets and settle in on fresh ones, jimin is exhausted in a way he’s never been before. 

he’s sated, finally, he realizes. 

taehyung starts to snore softly next to him and jimin shifts up onto an elbow to look down at his sleeping face, wondering not for the first time this week how he’s still going, after all of this. after every single one of them. 

first thing tomorrow, he’s getting him that tonic, jimin decides. 

taehyung rolls over in his sleep, frowning until his snuffles are muffled against jimin’s bare chest. 

“love you, min-ah,” he half slurs and jimin ruffles his hair gently, carefully, not willing to dislodge him from where he’s sleeping on jimin’s shoulder now. 

“i love you too,” he whispers back. 

taehyung doesn’t hear him, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest.

it never has, with the two of them. 

_/_/_/

before he can even open his eyes, jimin wakes up with the distinct and unsettling impression that he is being watched. 

he yawns and stretches a little and when he finally blinks his eyes open in the bright early morning light of taehyung’s room, he sees taehyung right next to him. still fast asleep. 

movement on the other side of the bed makes jimin almost leap out of his skin. 

“what in the actual fuck,” he’s wondering out loud even before he turns around and finds himself almost nose to nose with jungkook. who has crawled into bed next to him. shirtless. jimin is genuinely terrified to check if he’s wearing anything on his lower half. mostly because he doesn’t know whether he wants him to be, or not. 

“good morning, hyung,” jungkook says, smiling wide, all dimples and teeth and nose scrunch. jimin sighs. “happy ‘day i get to have sex with you’.” 

jimin’s soul - the very essence of him - sighs. 

“you make it very difficult to be in love with you, just in case you were wondering,” jimin says, rolling onto his back and folding his hands up under his head. “like, if you’ve ever thought ‘hmm i wonder what it’s like to love me’, it’s basically impossible. you say and do the stupidest, lamest shit possible and i still find it cute. everything about you is either completely adorable or unbearably hot - sometimes both - and i’m just a man, jungkook. i can only cope with so much.” 

when jungkook doesn’t say anything, doesn’t immediately launch into an argument or laugh or try to bodily attach himself to jimin’s person, jimin gets concerned. when jimin turns his head to look at him, he’s staring at jimin. and he’s blushing. 

jimin lifts his eyebrows at him, questioning, and jungkook’s blush only deepens. 

“you’ve never called me hot before,” he says finally, and jimin starts spluttering immediately, indignant. 

“that’s absolutely not true. i tell you all the time that -” 

“you tell me i look good, hyung. you tell me my outfit is nice or that i’m having a great hair day or whatever. you’ve never said that you personally find me attractive.” 

jimin closes his eyes again and wonders how hard it would be to go back to sleep and maybe - hopefully - wake up in an alternate reality. 

that reminds him, though, of the nature of this thing. how lucky they are that it happened like this for them - that it worked out this way for all of them. and more importantly, how it worked out this way for jimin specifically. 

“jungkook-ah,” he says, turning over to face him and brushing his morning-messy hair back out of his face, “taehyung changed me, a lot. in the early days, when i was a mess, taehyung showed me how i wanted to change and how to do that, he taught me everything i needed to know to let all of you show me what it means to love someone.” 

jungkook listens patiently, attentive, his eyes never leaving jimin’s. 

which means that jimin sees the way they shine when he says - 

“but i fell in love with you, first. you were the first person i ever loved like this. i’ve been in love with you the longest.” 

“hyung,” jungkook says, his face breaking free of any and all expression like a mask that’s been cracked in two. he looks young and lost. he looks just like he did when jimin realized he was in love with him. 

“obviously that doesn’t mean you’re my favourite, so don’t get any ideas,” he narrows his eyes at jungkook, who looks bashful and chastised in response, “but it does mean that i’m just as soft for you as the rest of them are. i just hide it better.” 

“but you don’t have to anymore. right?” jungkook asks, his eyes huge. one of his hands rises out of the covers to reach for jimin’s and he laces their fingers together tightly. “you’re not going to hide it anymore, right?” 

jimin thinks about it. 

“i’m not going to hide how much i want you, no,” jungkook’s big, shining eyes take on a different kind of sheen, at that. jimin is kind of frightened and he can’t even tell if it’s for himself or for jungkook. maybe it’s for the rest of them, and what they’re going to have to deal with, now. “i’m still going to tell you ‘no’ sometimes, though. because,” and he stresses this, “that’s a lot of fun for me.” 

“ah, you’re so mean to me, hyung,” jungkook pouts, but it’s purely performative, jimin can tell the difference from a mile away by now. “which, incidentally, i’m into. jin-hyung helped me figure that out.” 

jimin laughs delightedly and ducks all the way under the covers, reaching for jungkook’s waist and pulling him in. 

“of course he did,” he’s still laughing when jungkook goes rigid in his arms, close enough now that jimin could count his pores if the little fucker would do him the solid of having any. he’s staring at jimin’s mouth and jimin rolls his eyes and then throws the covers off them both and rolls right over onto jungkook. 

he holds himself up over jungkook with his hands on either side of jungkook’s head, their hips stacked - jungkook is wearing underwear; a small and unwanted mercy - and stares down at jungkook, who is looking back at him like jimin just announced his intention to rap on their next record. 

“c’mon then,” he says, dropping down to his elbows and brushing his nose in against jungkook’s. “kiss me. touch me. do whatever you want with me.” 

jungkook just stares, so jimin rocks his hips down, the press of their dicks apparently the jungkook equivalent of the shock of a defibrillator, because it spurs him into action at last. 

“ohmygod,” he says in a rush, but his awe seems to be taking a backseat to his frenzied hands, because in an instant one is clenched hard around jimin’s ass and the other is banded high at the back of jimin’s neck, bringing him in and down. 

the first press of their mouths makes them both groan and the lovely shock of it doesn’t let up, jimin’s want of jungkook only growing and growing as he kisses him deeper, as he gets jungkook’s lips parted for his tongue. both of his hands are on jimin’s thighs now, sliding down to pull them apart, jimin’s knees in the sheets at either side of jungkook’s waist when jungkook bands an arm low around jimin’s back and shifts him up, holds him down against him so he can rut up into him. 

when jungkook slips his hand up under the leg of jimin’s briefs and sucks at his tongue at the same time, jimin growls at him and pulls away. 

jungkook’s pout now is completely genuine. he opens his mouth to start griping, his mouth already twisted up around his many and maybe valid complaints, but jimin doesn’t give a shit, he hasn’t got time for this. he slaps a hand over jungkook’s mouth and very definitely does not notice the way jungkook’s eyes get heavy lidded, at that. 

“no, shut up,” he says when jungkook tries to speak against the palm of his hand. he twists at jungkook’s nipple with his free hand, just for emphasis, and respectfully watches as jungkook’s eyes roll up into his head. “i’m starving, so i’m going to go and eat something and in -” he reaches for his phone and thumbs the screen to check the time. “exactly thirty five minutes, you’re going to be in my bed, waiting for me. aren’t you?” 

jungkook’s eyes are back on him, big again now, but he nods slowly and decisively and several times in a row. 

“good boy,” jimin tells him, and jungkook’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks when jimin leans in to brush his nose against jungkook’s, his hand still between their mouths. 

jungkook’s exit is a ridiculous but still not unattractive combination of a hobble and a skip. 

“oh and jungkook?” 

he turns back to jimin instantly. 

“lose the boxers.” 

jungkook swears and then throws up a salute and disappears. jimin wonders off if he’s going to jerk off before jimin gets his hands on him. for jungkook’s sake, he hopes so. 

he settles back down into bed, reaching for the covers again but finding his hand grabbed and himself hauled across the bed into taehyung’s arms instead. 

“thirty five minutes, hmm?” taehyung says and jimin shrugs, not feeling like it’s necessary to explain that he doesn’t need thirty five minutes to eat breakfast, he just decided that that would be long enough to rile jungkook up without being so long that he’d lose all patience and go looking for any other hyung he could find instead. 

it turns out he doesn’t have to explain this to taehyung. but only because taehyung has something else in mind. 

“i’ll trade you a whole box of granola bars for thirty minutes of your time,” he says, dipping his head to tongue at jimin’s collarbones. 

jimin cups the back of taehyung’s head in his hand and frowns. 

“i feel like you’re low-balling me and you should know that after last night,” he tips his head back and swallows hard when taehyung licks up along the line of his neck, pausing to suck at his adam’s apple. “but i’ve been trying to impress namjoon and yoongi with my charity works lately, so i accept.” 

“charity?” taehyung huffs, brushing the tip of his nose up over jimin’s chin now, his eyes dark and amused. 

jimin shrugs. 

“hey, does it count as community service, because there’s so many of us? does seven people constitute a community, do you think?” 

taehyung kisses him hard on the mouth. 

“i don’t think there’s a word for what we are, jimin-ah,” he says against jimin’s lips, his hands already working jimin’s briefs down off his hips. 

“we should make one. let’s work on that. after my community service. and then my other community service. and then maybe some other community services,” jimin decides, and taehyung grins at him. 

this time, when taehyung pulls jimin in against him, there is no pause, no stuttering or stumbling, because there’s no lines left between them, nothing there for them to trip over. 

this is the first of a great many times just like this one, different in each instance for who is involved but identical in sentiment, indistinguishable by depth and breadth of feeling. 

this is the way they are now, together and seamless, at last. all of them in it the same way, for the same reasons. 

above boundaries that would dictate the flow and spread of their love. 

beyond their seams. 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/  
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'now or never' by sf9 - a certified bop.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from a great song called 'shine on you' by empara mi. it always makes me think of taehyung when i listen to it, maybe specifically because of the line "cause the sun only shines on beautiful things and it shines on you."


End file.
